The Role of Human Rights in American Foreign Policy: The Romanian Case 1965-1989 By Ramona Cotca

Acknowledgments

Foremost, I thank my parents and sister, Claudia, who have most gracefully borne the

stressful times throughout this past year. Their encouragement, patience and love were

invaluable to anything else. I would also like to thank John V. A. Fine Jr., Professor of

History – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and also my history thesis advisor, most

profoundly for his attentive, constant and detailed counsel that has particularly guided

and encouraged my efforts throughout this enormous project.

I am grateful to Zvi Gitelman, Professor of Political Science – University of Michigan,

Ann Arbor, for his time and effort as my political science thesis advisor and Paula

Pickering, Ph.D. for her contributing remarks. In addition, I would like to convey my

appreciation to Professor Vasile Puscas, Professor of History and International Relations

- Babes- Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, for his additional suggestions and Victoria

Popescu-Sandru, Deputy Director of the Directorate for Human Rights and the Council of

Europe of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for her friendly response in

providing interviewees, the necessary documents and other necessary information

pertaining to my research. Mark Almond, Lecturer in Modern History – Oriel College,

University of Oxford, and Dr. Michael Hurst, Professor – St. John’s College, University

of Oxford, were also helpful in their suggestions while I was there and I thank them.

Furthermore, Barbara H Garavaglia from the University of Michigan, Law Library has

been most instrumental in helping me sort out the necessary sources and address other

research needs. I would further like to extend my thanks to the Gerald Ford Presidential

Library and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, to their staff for their efforts and

collaboration. Last, but not least, I express my sincere gratitude to Susan Priller for her

time and effort in editing, and Ilka Rasch and Pamela Bogart, my German and French

instructors respectively, for their patience with me this past semester.

Introduction

Romania, although a relatively small country on the Eastern European map, was an

unusually active country in Cold-War politics throughout Nicolae Ceausescu’s

dictatorship from 1965 to 1989. As the Cold War transformed the international system

into a bipolar one, with the various countries allying themselves behind either the United

States or the Soviet Union, Romania’s independent inclinations from Moscow caught

America’s eye, as a more independent Romania served American national interest. After

a foreign policy of containment by which American policy focused on suppressing the

spread of communism, the United States included in its national interest a policy of

differentiation, which encouraged communist countries to assert greater independence

from the Soviet Union.

Romania gained attention from the United States when it asserted itself as a nation that

sought an independent foreign policy motivated by self-determination. At Moscow’s

orders, Romania refused to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968 with the other Warsaw-Pact

countries. From the Western perspective, Nicolae Ceausescu gained the reputation of a

maverick, being the only Warsaw-Pact leader to refuse to participate in that invasion. The

willingness to resist Moscow’s wishes initiated a new development in U.S.-Romanian

relations. American relations with Romania peaked in 1975 when the United States

granted Most Favored Nation (MFN) status to Romania; but then relations worsened in

the late 1980s until friendly relations ended in July 1987 with Congressional suspension

of Romania’s MFN status.

Even though research on U.S.-Romanian relations during the Cold War is scarce, the

existing literature tends to claim that Ceausescu’s human-rights’ violations escalated

greatly in the 1980s and, therefore, the United States responded by ending its treaty-based

relations based on MFN status with Romania.

Out of the three most recent studies that I found on U.S.-Romanian relations, two limited

their period of coverage to the 1980s: David B. Funderburk’s Pinstripes and Reds

examined American relations with Romania from 1981 to 1985 and Romania Versus the

United States written by Roger Kirk and Mircea Raceanu examined U.S.-Romanian

relations from 1985 to 1989. The third monograph was Joseph F. Harrington and Bruce J.

Courtney’s Tweaking the Nose of the Russians: Fifty Years of American-Romanian

Relations, 1940-1990. Although the last work covered my entire period and yet, each

work touched on the human rights issue as a part of the overall U.S.-Romanian relations,

none of the above research examined the role of human rights in America’s relations with

Romania during the entirety of Ceausescu’s regime. Because Funderburk’s book is more

of a primary source than a secondary work, as he tells of his experiences in Romania as

the American Ambassador from 1981 to 1984, his book, published before Congress

suspended Romania’s MFN status in 1987, is mainly a narration of events. Throughout

his text, he sought to refute an American popular claim that MFN provided leverage to

help Romania deviate further from Moscow and he instead sought to focus on

Ceausescu’s religious oppression in the eighties; therefore, although useful as evidence,

his text has no real bearing on my argument. While Kirk and Raceanu examined U.S.-

Romanian relations to convey how “mutual misperceptions affected diplomacy” they

noted that Congress increased its concerns over human rights in Romania because

human-rights’ violations increased, thereby leading to the end of America’s friendly

relations with Romania. Likewise, Harrington and Courtney attributed the faltering

relations between the United States and Romania to an increase in Ceausescu’s human-

rights’ violations in the 1980s as they examined U.S.-Romanian relations within the

context of Romanian-Soviet relations.

The purpose of my interdisciplinary project in history and political science is to

determine why in fact U.S.-Romanian relations did begin to cool in 1985 and then bring

to a close their MFN treaty-based relations in 1987. By answering the above question, the

thesis challenges the claim that U.S.-Romanian relations worsened because Romania’s

human-rights’ violations increased in the 1980s. By examining human-rights’ concerns at

the U.S. executive and Congressional levels throughout Ceausescu’s regime, I will show

that large numbers of human-rights’ violations and American awareness of them existed

throughout the entirety of Ceausescu’s dictatorship. However, the human-rights’

phenomenon evolved during the studied period, as a change occurred in the nature of

those violations in the 1980s. Therefore, by examining these changes, I will try to

determine the significance human rights had (including specific sorts of rights) in U.S.-

Romanian relations and whether that role by itself was significant enough to determine

the course of America’s relations with Romania. In other words, were human rights ever

the primary force motivating American policy, or did other concern(s) take precedence?

The thesis primarily focuses on the period of the countries’ MFN treaty-based relations

period, 1975 to 1987, but will examine the years from 1965 until the end of the Romanian

communist regime in 1989; the earlier years will provide background information about

the initiation of their relations. MFN status was an indication of friendly relations because

it was granted to Romania as a reward for its independence from the Soviet Union.

Therefore, throughout the Congressional debates on whether to continue Romania’s MFN

status, until 1986, those favoring MFN usually disregarded human-rights’ concerns and

emphasized Romania’s independence, while those arguing against extending MFN status

generally focused on human-rights’ concerns. In 1986, however, American policy at the

Congressional level was to take a turn, for at that time both sides of the debate discussed

human rights. The debate now, however, was on whether Romania’s MFN status ought to

be continued because discontinuing it might lead Ceausescu to increase his repressive

policies versus the argument that continuing Romania’s MFN status only endorsed its

human-rights’ violations.

While pursuing an answer to the historical significance of human rights in U.S.-

Romanian relations, this thesis also addresses some general political-science questions

regarding the relationship between American foreign policy and human rights. Do human

rights possess the potential to determine U.S. foreign policy and, if so, under what

circumstances? In an attempt to answer the proposed questions, the political-science

hypothesis supported by this thesis is that national interest, influenced by contemporary

situations, will usually override human rights concerns if they conflict, but if conditions

are right certain types of violations of human rights, such as freedom of religion, can

influence U.S. foreign policy.

To the best of my knowledge, secondary literature on Cold-War Romania with respect to

human-rights’ concerns in the U.S. is extremely scarce. Therefore, I had to turn to

secondary literature on human rights and U.S. foreign policy in general.

The term “human rights” emerged only after the Second World War, owing to the war’s

atrocities against millions of individuals. The claim that international organizations ought

to protect individuals was a new and radical idea, which Robert F. Drinan discussed in

his book, Cry of the Oppressed. Drinan argued that until the 1950s, international

organizations were recognized as having a role to protect nations, but never individuals.

According to Drinan, the new consensus after the Second World War was that global

organizations, not merely individual countries, ought to claim a role as protectors of

individuals. Human rights became an extremely important international issue; but at the

same time, with the emergence of the Cold War, the United States ceased to be outspoken

on human-rights’ concerns in certain regions of the world owing to its attention in

promoting Eastern European independence from the Soviet Union, therefore maintaining

uncritical relations with “friendly tyrants.” Drinan argued that the United Nations wanted

the U.S. to be outspoken on human rights owing to its leading place in the international

arena; however, America failed to do so until the Carter administration.

The content of the concept human rights has long been debated, yet the first international

instrument on human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 provides

a compromise among different opinions as to what should be included in such a

declaration. Universal political rights were expressed in Article 21 of the declaration as it

claimed “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or

through freely chosen representatives.” Article 22 of the Universal Declaration protects

social and economic rights by asserting that “Everyone, as a member of society, has the

right to social security and is entitled to the realization, through national effort and

international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each

state, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free

development of his personality.” Ideological differences, however, between the East and

West during the Cold War led to mutual disagreements and accusations on both sides.

The communists agitators viewed individual rights as abstract and emphasized the

community. The capitalist camp, however, believed in the supremacy of the individual.

The latter group emphasized civil and political rights, whereas the former stressed

economic and social rights, and because of this ideological difference, the communist

camp, including Romania, viewed Western human-rights’ demands as an intrusion into

their internal affairs.

Within the context of the Cold War, scholars concerned with human rights with respect to

U.S. foreign policy argued about what that policy should be based on and produced two

opposing schools of thought: realism versus idealism. In essence the debate reflects

Western views on the relations between morality and politics. Attempting to analyze the

Cold War in retrospect, George Weigel’s Idealism without Illusions defended idealism by

intertwining morality and politics. Weigel claimed that morality is compatible with

political life, “discernible by the human moral imagination.” His Idealism without

Illusions applied moral principles to situations, so as to maximize the good and minimize

the chances of worsening the present situation. Supported by the latter argument, Weigel

claimed human rights the victors of the Cold War, over the realists.

Contrary to that of the idealist, the realist position primarily emphasized national interest

and placed human rights concerns lower on a priority list. During the Cold War, the U.S.

national interest focused on containing communism, which in fact translated into anti-

Sovietism. Adam Garfinkle, arguing the realist position, claimed that the ends justified

the means; thus the containment of communism justified U.S. relations with “friendly

tyrants.” Realists argued that human-rights’ concerns were overlooked when the U.S.

considered relations with anti-Moscow countries that were willing to counter Soviet

foreign policy. Louis Rene Beres’ book on the influence of human rights in U.S. foreign

policy argued that throughout the Cold-War years, the United States subordinated its

foreign policy to Realpolitik. Beres argued that the American national interest and anti-

Sovietism fueled U.S. foreign policy, causing the U.S. to disregard human rights

violations among Warsaw-Pact countries that sought independent paths.

Romania is an ideal case to study this human-rights’ debate. Understanding what

occurred between Romania and the United States during the Cold War and why particular

policies were pursued can help scholars understand the role that human-rights’ policies

played in U.S. foreign policy towards a particularly country. The brief explanation above

of the historiography and political debate on human rights is drawn from Western

secondary literature. In general, “realists” placed human rights as subordinate to a

recognized national interest; whereas, “idealists” claimed that by the end of the Cold War

human rights predominated over American’s more material national interests. The

findings in this paper, however, will narrow the gap between the two opposing views, for

though national interest usually motivated American foreign policy, certain human-

rights’ concerns did have the power to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Because the secondary literature specific to Romania is scarce, this thesis relies on

original research into primary sources. The two major primary sources that provided the

evidence for this paper are the executive papers of the relevant presidents and the

Congressional Record. After Romania received its MFN status in 1975, U.S.-Romanian

relations came to involve two levels of government, presidential and Congressional; the

two branches remained involved until Congress suspended Romania’s MFN status in

1987. The Congressional role was directly introduced in a major way into U.S.-Romanian

relations when Congress was brought in to approve Romania’s MFN status. Therefore, I

systematically used the Congressional Record from 1972 to 1987 and I read all the entries

on Romanian. The Record was a valuable source because it provided a regular flow of

evidence throughout this period on U.S.-Romanian relations - noting diplomatic

exchanges and the purpose of those exchanges, as well as America’s awareness of

human-rights’ violations in Romania. I did not need to examine the Congressional

Record prior to 1972, because U.S.-Romanian relations before their MFN status trade

agreement were maintained at a strictly executive level, with minimal Congressional

influence in the 1960. The primary sources at the administration level vary in quality over

time due to the fact that some material is still classified. Most documents prior to 1968

have been declassified and were compiled in the volumes of the Foreign Relations of the

United States. The Eastern Europe volume provided most of the evidence up to 1968.

Next, I used the Weekly Compilation of the Presidential Documents for the entire thesis

and, finally, I relied on the actual declassified material at the Gerald Ford and Ronald

Reagan Presidential Libraries, having the latter library fax copies of all their unclassified

documents on Romania, which comprised twenty-five pages.

Other primary sources used included Ion Pacepa’s autobiography, Red Horizons, reports

from Radio Free Europe, (RFE), Foreign Broadcast Information Services (FBIS), which

is a compilation of foreign media sources e.g., Lumea - the Romanian Communist

newspaper and the Soviet Communist Party press. Although Romanian primary sources

on this issue are scarce due to Ceausescu’s censorship policies and to the destruction of

documents during the 1989 Revolution, the FBIS reports at present are the best sources to

convey a Romanian perspective over time, or better, a Romanian communist elite

perspective. The FBIS reports also provide other communist perspectives, like those of

the Soviet Union. Because the FBIS reports are a collection of translated reports from

various sources, which were published by the communist parties, the audience addressed

consisted of local readers and also proved useful to a foreign audience of U.S. academics

and government. It is necessary to note that since the sources reproduced in these reports

were communist publications they were highly censored and thus, only represented the

Communist Party and Romanian government positions.

My thesis is divided chronologically into five chapters, besides an introduction and

conclusion. Each chapter consists of six main parts that provide a historical context for

America’s bilateral relations with Romania and analyze their relations in terms of human-

rights’ issues. To better understand U.S.-Romanian relations, each chapter begins with

background information on Romania’s domestic situation during the given period and

Cold-War policies. These policies are an important aspect in determining U.S.-Romanian

relations primarily, because they reflected America’s national interest which encouraged

Romania to be more independent from the Soviet Union, a key element in Cold-War

policies. Furthermore, it will be important to notice the relationship between these

policies and U.S.-Romanian relations as the latter improved during tense times between

the United States and the Soviet Union, and later, after the Cold War entered a new phase

under Gorbachev, how Romania’s maverick position became increasingly less important

for the U.S.

With the Cold War in the background, the chapters next turn to Romania’s international

position. The first half of each chapter focuses on Romania within the Cold-War context

and therefore how its behavior related to America’s national interest and the second half

emphasizes Romania’s specific relations with the United States. They are first measured

by the diplomatic exchanges mentioned in the Weekly Compilations of Presidential

Documents and documents from the Presidential Libraries at the administration level and

then starting with the second chapter, at the Congressional level. The Congressional

Record reveals Congressional delegations to Romania, stating their purposes for going,

and Congressional judgment about American relations with Romania. I believe the

number of diplomatic exchanges and their stated purposes are an accurate estimate of

these bilateral relations because they were initiated as an instrument for developing these

relations.

The same sources also provide evidence for the last two sections of each chapter, those

being the human rights’ issues that were brought into the discussion and the actual trade

relations themselves. Evidence for the former is derived from the number and types of

human-rights’ items mentioned in the Congressional Record, especially on the occasion

of the MFN status debates, and from correspondence within the various administrations.

The last section, trade, must be examined in U.S.-Romanian relations because their trade

agreement in 1975, granting Romania MFN status, represented the peak in their friendly

relations, and also because this agreement formally introduced emigration concerns into

their relations and, de facto, this brought to the floor a human-rights’ issue.

I must note that the project obviously has its limitations. Since my research time was

limited to one year, my sources had to be carefully selected in priority order. Because I

had so many primary sources, I did not have time to examine others, in particular the

documents in the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, for it had too many documents on

Romania to have them all xeroxed and had no time to visit the library. However, because

President Carter formally introduced human rights as a category of American national

interest, the tensions that previously existed between Congress and the administration

were alleviated and therefore, Congressional documents presumably express concerns

similar to the Carter administration. Moreover, if I had had more time, I would have

followed these issues in the New York Times and in leading American Journals (e.g.,

Foreign Affairs or Harpers) – both news stories and editorial/opinion pieces. But time

forced my study to focus on the importance of human rights in American trade relations

with Romania as viewed by the executive and legislative branches of the United States

government.

Chapter I

Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations: 1965-1971

Domestic Situation in Romania

The 1960s was a decade in which Romania attracted world attention as it increasingly

defied the Soviet Union through nationalism, which by definition consisted of anti-

Russification. Nicolae Ceausescu even publicly criticized the Soviet Union and the Red

Army’s conduct during its occupation of Romania after the war. Romania’s domestic

situation under communism is best defined by its nationalistic qualities. According to

Walter A. Kemp in Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet

Union, national consciousness is driven by a sense that a nation’s territory must be self-

sufficient or at least not excessively dependent on the outside world. Romanian

Communist leaders became independently minded and nationalistic in response to

Moscow’s attempts to subdue Romania to its complete authority. As a result, the

nationalistic qualities of the Romanian communist regime emerged out of its resistance to

Soviet autarky, and many scholars agree that this was the main catalyst for the rise of

national communism in Romanian. Therefore, nationalistic sentiments increasingly grew

in the political and cultural spheres in the 1960s.

Starting in the early 1960s the Romanian Communist leader, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej,

adopted nationalist domestic policies that emphasized the Romanian culture and defied

Soviet attempts at Russification for Romania. Historiography became important as Dej

introduced Daco-Roman theory claiming a direct ancestral line between the ancient

Dacians, Romans, and present-day Romanians and therefore, stressing Romania’s Latin

roots and culture. He halted the phonetic changes that have been made in the 1940s and

50s in an effort to make the Romanian language appear more Slavic, and archeology was

used to prove continuity between the Roman heritage and the present Romanian state.

The Romanian Communist regime became assertive towards the Soviets, as it publicly

criticized the Soviet annexations of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Further

Romanian resistance to Moscow’s ambitions to dominate Romanian culture was evident

by the decisions to change names of places from Russian back to Romanian, to stop

mandatory learning of the Russian language, and to close the Russian cultural center in

Bucuresti. The Romanian cultural revival in the early 1960s was accompanied, if not

instigated, by national economic and therefore political ambitions that Moscow disliked.

Romania’s building project of the Galati metallurgical complex became a symbol of

Romania’s ability to negotiate its own future, particularly its economic future. The

Soviets thought that Romania and the entire Eastern bloc should be integrated into a

supranational economic zone, dominated by the Soviets. When Khrushchev proposed the

establishment of a bloc-wide supranational planning authority and an investment plan for

the exploitation of raw materials, Moscow and its other communist satellites, like

Czechoslovakia and East Germany, opposed Romania’s attempt to develop its steel

industry and sought to limit Romania to petrol-chemical and agricultural industries.

Foreseeing the harm produced by the plan, which would have made Romania reliant on

other countries within the bloc for heavy industrial products, Gheorghe-Dej refused to

oblige the Soviets and stood his ground in the face of a great world power. Fearing

dependency and exploitation, Dej did not want Romania to become an oil, petrochemical,

and agricultural reserve for Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CEMA).

Consequently, the Romanian government insisted on its independence in internal matters.

The Soviet Union’s unwillingness to assist Romania in its steel industrial ambitions led to

Romania’s turn toward the West for economic aid and loans. Therefore, in the early

1960s, Romania showed its ability to act independently and, in fact, to withstand Soviet

pressure regarding its economic path.

While the Galati steel mill project symbolized Romania’s independent economic path it

also opened Romania to the West and led Romania to depict itself as an independent

country in its foreign affairs. Romania’s refusal to co-operate with Moscow’s regional

economic plans led it to make an economic appeal to the West. Economically, it

rigorously attempted to join the Western General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

(GATT) and politically, Romania distanced itself from the other communist countries on

matters of little importance to Moscow, but which still marked its independent course.

Romania, for example, was the only communist country at a United Nations conference

to vote in favor of a nuclear-free zone in Latin America. The fact that all the other

communist countries voted against it, distinguished Romania from its neighbors.

Romania adopted the same strategy when its delegates were the only ones from the

communist bloc to vote for a one per cent contribution of the GNP of all industrial

countries to a fund for developing nations. Dej set Romania on the path to nationalism

and laid the foundation for Ceausescu’s stronger version of nationalism, especially in

Romania’s foreign affairs, as it developed its own economic strategies and distanced

itself just enough from Moscow and the Eastern bloc in foreign affairs to make a

statement to the West. Even though Ion Ratiu does not believe nationalism to have been

Dej’s goal, most scholars agree that industrialization and economic development were his

priorities. However, nationalism surfaced then owing to the Soviet Unions’ refusal to

support Romania’s own economic objectives.

Accompanying the nationalistic cultural and economic polices, the Romanian Communist

Party sought nationalistic political policies that reflected Romanian national interest. The

basic aims of the RCP foreign policy were conveyed in the “Statement of the Romanian

Workers’ Party” (later name changed to Romanian Communist Party), in 1964.

Bearing in mind the diversity of the conditions of socialist construction, there are not, nor

can there be, any unique patterns and recipes; no one can decide what is and what is not

correct for other countries and parties. It is up to every Marxist-Leninist party, [and]it is a

sovereign right for each socialist state, to elaborate, choose, or change the forms and

methods of socialist construction. There does not and cannot exist a socialist party or

superior parties and subordinate parties…no party has, or can have a privileged place, or

can impose its line and opinions on other parties.

Dej initiated nationalistic domestic policies and Ceausescu successfully continued them.

Throughout the Sino-Soviet dispute, Romania maintained its neutral line, calling on the

two communist parties to resolve their differences. The Romanian leadership avoided and

opposed all Soviet attempts to convene an international conference of all communist

parties which had as its goal to ostracize the Chinese Communist Party and “other

deviants.” Romania argued that no criticism of another party was admissible. The RCP

established this position in April 1964 when the Central Committee agreed to the

“Statement on the Stand of the Romania Workers’ Party concerning the Problems of the

World Communist and Working Class Movement.” The statement conveyed Romania’s

declaration of independence and was an outright challenge to Moscow’s authority in the

communist world. Romania’s independence was also evident in the intensified ties that

developed between Romania and Yugoslavia, despite on-going tensions between Beograd

and Moscow. Diplomatic visits increased when Ceausescu came to power and continued

even after Tito’s death in 1980. The countries agreed to engage in two major projects on

the Danube designed to provide electricity and improve rail and water communications.

What is more noteworthy is that both countries “agreed to disagree, ” on various matters,

therefore, respecting each other’s political integrity.

While Romania remained a hard-line communist nation, it developed its national culture

as an attempt to resist “Russification” and attacks on its Roman heritage. Internationally,

however, it attracted the West’s attention by its ability to distinguish itself from the rest

of the communist bloc and develop a foreign policy independent of Moscow that

reflected Romania’s own interest.

U.S.-Soviet Relations

The end of World War II significantly changed the power blocs in the international

system. Churchill first described the new boundary between East and West in 1946 in

Fulton, Missouri as one made of an “Iron Curtain.” The clashing ideologies of capitalism

and socialism, democracy and communism underlay the origins of the Cold War, which

divided Europe into two spheres of influence, one led by the Union of the Soviet Socialist

Republics and the other by the United States of America. Only a few years after the Yalta

agreement in February 1945, Eastern Europe had become a buffer zone for the Soviet

Union, and Stalin was determined to accept nothing less than communist regimes in these

states, completely subservient to Moscow. Consequently, the U.S. retaliated by adopting

the containment of communism as a core of its foreign policy as expressed in the Truman

Doctrine in 1947. The Truman Doctrine, which offered support to regimes threatened by

potential communist takeovers, as part of its containment policy, escalated tensions

between the West and East, which finally came to a showdown during the Cuban Missile

Crisis, which significantly threatened world peace. The heightened nuclear tension in

return forced both powers to enter a relaxation or coexistence phase. In January 1967, the

U.S., the Soviet Union, and the UK signed the Outer Space Treaty that prohibited putting

nuclear weapons in orbit. The Soviet Union hoped to gain the international status of a

superpower, to obtain Western recognition for a postwar status quo of a divided Europe

and to revive its faltering economy through increasing trade with the U.S. and Western

Europe. The U.S., on the other hand, hoped to bind the USSR to stay out of international

conflicts by drawing Moscow into closer relations with Washington and to expand trade

with Eastern Europe. Their policies became known as détente and starting in the 1960s

U.S. foreign policy towards Eastern Europe formally became one of bridge building or

differentiation.

Their bilateral relations cooled once again, as both, détente and bridge building policies

were threatened by the Soviets’ aggressive military move into Czechoslovakia in August

1968. The entire world watched developments in Czechoslovakia and mourned its fate.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia breached the mutual understanding seemingly reached

between the U.S. and Soviet Union. It threatened the future of détente and also the

independence of sovereign nation-states of Eastern Europe. In the words of an American

statesman, the occupation of Czechoslovakia “by the Warsaw Pact provided a cold

douche for the future of détente, or the progressive rapprochement of East and West.”

Admitting that direct intervention in Eastern Europe could quickly escalate into World

War Three, the United States refrained from military action; however, it publicly

condemned the Soviets for their action. Immediate reactions by Washington were to

cancel exchanges, whether political, cultural or educational, between the two countries in

order that they not be misinterpreted as indications of goodwill toward Moscow or the

other invading Warsaw-Pact countries. Washington did, however, respond to reasonable

worries about a Pact invasion of Romania. President Lyndon Johnson issued a warning

that such an invasion would have incalculable consequences. Romania seemed likely to

be next on the list due to its already implemented independent foreign policy and its

public condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Washington sent Moscow

several messages imploring the Soviets in the “name of all humanity” not to contemplate

such a move, for the result would be disastrous for the world. A movement into Romania

would also have brought Soviet troops closer to Yugoslavia and NATO bases in the

Mediterranean, which explains U.S. opposition to any further movement of Soviet troops.

The Soviet and Warsaw-Pact leadership, excluding Romania, was united on the

Czechoslovakia crisis and agreed that Dubvcek’s leadership threatened the vital interests

of socialism. The Soviet Union saw Eastern Europe as vital to its strategic needs, acting

as a “forward” area for offense and a buffer for defense for the Soviet Union. It also

viewed the defection of any of the Eastern European states or their Communist Parties as

a repudiation of its doctrine. Prague Spring was indeed a threat to the monopoly rule of

the Czechoslovak Communist Party and threatened Soviet hegemony. The Soviets,

however, also sought to persuade the West that the invasion should not be interpreted as a

signal of it hardening its policies toward the West, but as a reaction to an internal

problem within its own sphere. It is evident in contemporary State Department papers

that Washington understood their reasoning, even though it protested its justification, for

Czechoslovakia had claimed it had no intentions of leaving the Warsaw Pact.

Nevertheless, the occupation could not but cause a deterioration of U.S.-Soviet relations.

International Perception of Romania

A telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Bucuresti to the U.S. Department of State clearly

conveyed U.S. perceptions of Romania in 1965 when it wondered how long Romania

could continue to get away with its independent policies in the face of a perceived

tightening of Soviet pressure on the Warsaw Pact. The U.S. acknowledged Romania’s

attempts at closer ties with the West, especially economic ties with the U.S., and asserted

their importance for global politics. Meanwhile, the Eastern bloc followed with interest

the developments in U.S.-Romanian relations and wondered whether Washington was

serious in applying its bridge building policy. Through the 1960s Romania increasingly

received attention for its internal nationalistic policies and its refusal to give in to

Moscow’s hegemony at the expense of its own national interests. Meanwhile,

Ceausescu’s policies earned him the term maverick, when he objected to the invasion of

Czechoslovakia. The new leader of the Romanian Socialist Republic, Nicolae Ceausescu,

was young and becoming increasingly popular with the Romanian people and now, with

the Western world. His refusal to join the Warsaw-Pact countries’ invasion of

Czechoslovakia and his blunt criticism of that action made him an international hero.

Tito’s non-alignment policy very much attracted Ceausescu and drew these two

mavericks into closer relations. Ceausescu’s resistance to Soviet interference in

Romanian affairs made him seem a “young Tito.”

Romania’s first steps to resist to Soviet interference in internal affairs occurred just

before Ceausescu rose to power in 1965. When Ceausescu came to power in 1965, he

continued pressing the already established economic policies that were independent of

Moscow, which attracted attention as did his public condemnation of the Warsaw-Pact

occupation in 1968 of Czechoslovakia. And at that time he announced that the Romanian

government would protect the country’s autonomy from foreign invasion and he

negotiated a mutual defense pact with Tito’s Yugoslavia. Political independence,

however, proved not to be easily attainable. From the evidence, I conjecture that Moscow

warned Ceausescu after he had denounced Soviet actions in Czechoslovakia. In a

telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Bucuresti to the U.S. Department of State,

Ambassador to Romania, Mr. Davis, wrote of Romania’s increasing silence about the

events in August 1968, for the Romanians were no longer openly criticizing the recent

events. Moreover, the Romanians had to in part withstand to certain Soviet demands.

Several executive Foreign Relations Documents suggest that the Soviets demanded that

Romania allow Warsaw-Pact troops to have maneuvers on its territory. Proceeding the

Czechoslovakia events, Soviet policy had been to more vigorously strengthen the

Warsaw Pact through integrated military units as well as the standardization of equipment

throughout the Warsaw Pact countries. Romania would not, however, ever consider

surrendering national control of its Armed Forces and instead pressed for a greater voice

for Eastern-bloc countries in Warsaw-Pact affairs.

Romania’s growing independence was also seen in the intensified ties between Romania

and Yugoslavia. Presidential visits increased under Ceausescu and continued after Tito’s

death. The countries agreed not only to the mutual defense Pact but also to engage in two

major projects on the Danube designed to provide electricity and improve rail and water

communications. Their resistance to yield their national interest to Moscow’s interests

gave their policies more flexibility than that of other Eastern Bloc communist leaders.

Ceausescu continued Dej’s already-established path towards seeking investments from

the West. In the early 1970s Romania applied for IMF membership as well as attempted

to obtain recognition from the European Economic Community as a developing country.

Moreover, tourism became an important source of revenue for the Romanian

government. The Romanian government expected over four million foreign tourists by

1975, an increase from the 670,000 tourists in 1965. By the 1970s investments in

Romania corresponded with US national interest and invited other Western investments,

as Romania’s economic achievements directed Romania’s foreign policy.

U.S.-Romanian Relations

Bilateral relations between Romania and the U.S. took off in 1968, after Romania clearly

showed itself to be a country demonstrating self-determination and following a course in

favor of its national interest, as opposed to depending on the Soviet Union. Before the

Czechoslovakia occupation U.S.-Romanian relations were restricted to insufficient trade

and Washington wondered how far Romania’s independence of Moscow might go.

Realizing that the U.S. could no longer view the Eastern Bloc as a monolith, the U.S.

moved toward a policy of treating its diverse countries on an individual basis. The U.S.

had been aware of Romania’s growing independence economically, for Romania had

been moving away from Soviet economic policies ever since Dej’s leadership, in the

early sixties. Yet, with Ceausescu, whose nationalism and resistance to Russification

appealed to the Romanian public as well as to the international community, talks between

Romania and the U.S. became more frequent.

These relations, especially economic ones, increased from 1965 to 1971, as both states

sought an improvement in their relations—even though, their motives differed. In a

meeting in 1967 between Romania’s Prime Minister, Ion Gheorghe Maurer, and

Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, the Romanians, although they realized the U.S. did not

stand to gain much economically from trading with them, hinted that the U.S. might be

more interested in such trade for the political independence Romania would gain from it.

Thus Romania was aware that through economic relations with the West it would benefit

politically as well as economically. Gaining a privileged trading status, Romania would

acquire from a larger market and escape bloc policies that favored the Soviet Union and

economically hurt Romania. Politically, in distancing itself from Moscow, it could gain

the favor of the Romanian people and the approval of non-bloc international leaders.

Washington, meanwhile, gained very little economically, but it did gain success in bridge

building.

Informal visits to Romania began as early as 1966 when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State

Solomon briefly and unofficially visited Romania. Solomon met with individuals in the

Romanian Foreign Ministry and discussed trade. Both parties acknowledged that though

the amount of trading would not be high, it would be significant enough to begin building

their relations on it. Trade was a reason for exchanging visits and the best means to

strengthen their relations. Nevertheless, setbacks occurred, mainly in the American

Congress. Hoping to close a deal with Firestone, the Romanian government was

confronted for the first time with American politics. The deal in fact was never completed

as “Rightists” intervened, lobbying against the deal due to the Romania’s dictatorial rule

that suppressed its people. The development of trade between the U.S. and Romania will

be discussed in detail later in this chapter; however, it is relevant to mention such

setbacks here in order to understand the context of their relations in the later sixties.

Romania had not changed its domestic policies; it merely sough to improve its

international position.

Ceausescu progressed toward a position that was soon envied. Approaching the 1970s, he

maintained friendly relations with three powerful nations that did not like one anther: the

United States of America, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, and the People’s

Republic of China. President Nixon acknowledged this fact and asserted Romania’s

strategic importance for the U.S. when Ceausescu visited the U.S. in 1970.

President Nicolae Ceausescu is in a unique position to head a government which is one of

the few in the world that has good relations with the U.S., Soviet Union and China. Under

those circumstances it is extremely valuable for the President of the U.S. to have the

opportunity to speak to the President of Romania to discuss the problems, not only

[those] that we have between ourselves, but also these broader world problems in which

Romania, because of its special position, can make a very constructive contribution to the

eventual peaceful world we all want to share together.

Approaching this position, Romania had to make sure that Washington understood its

policy. An American diplomatic mission visited Romania in 1967 and as the two sides

met, Romanian Foreign Minister Manescu asked the Americans whether they rightly

understood Romanian policy? Without waiting for an answer, Manescu claimed that

Romania was determined to follow an independent course that sought its own national

interest. It turned out that American Ambassador to Romania had still not met with

Ceausescu and the Romanians were beginning to interpret that as a personal insult.

The Romanians gently hinted to the Ambassador that the Romanian president would

be happy to meet with him to discuss their relations. Taking the advice, a meeting was

scheduled in February, one month after the American mission to Romania. Once

again the Romanians took the first opportunity to emphasize Romania’s policy, which

was declared to be one that sought to develop its economy and to assure the

independence and sovereignty of Romania; such a policy sought good relations with

all states irrespective of their social or political systems.

By the end of the decade, American-Romanian relations had reached a higher political

level as the U.S. increasingly wished to further its relations with Romania. Romania’s

success in defying the Soviet Union during the Czechoslovakia crisis bolstered its

new international position. But Romania was forced to take steps in order to maintain

its national sovereignty and integrity. For example, at the peak of the crisis

Romanians publicly condemned Moscow; however, the Russians seem to have taken

them aside and warned them. Bucuresti indeed verbally quieted down, yet it did not

alter its position on the issue or damage its international standing, since the U.S. and

others in the West very well knew that Bucuresti would have to make some minor

concessions. President Nixon’s visit to Romania in 1969 and then President

Ceausescu’s to the U.S. in 1970 clearly marked Romania’s success in the aftermath of

Czechoslovakia, but more importantly highlighted a new level of bilateral relations

between Romania and America. President Nixon’s visit to Romania was the first visit

ever of an American president to Romania. Likewise, President Ceausescu’s visit to

the U.S. was the first visit of a Romanian head of state to ever visit America. Their

visits were huge breakthroughs in U.S.-Romanian relations, as America expressed

respect for the Romanian leader, a communist leader of an insignificant country that

bordered the Soviet Union.

Significance of Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations

Human rights policies in Romania played a minor role in U.S.-Romanian relations

during this period. Their role in American-Romanian relations has already been

briefly hinted at above. On a high-political scale, human rights had a very minor role

in U.S. foreign policy, if any at all. It attracted greater notice, yet with little impact, on

a lower-political level, and that to be exact was within the U.S. Congress.

In a meeting between Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Soviet Ambassador

Dobrynin, the Secretary expressed American concerns about alarming reports about

troop movements on the Soviet-Romanian frontier and urged the Soviets not to

consider making such a move. Nevertheless, as events were unfolding at the height of

this potential crisis, Washington contemplated various responses, including some sort

of retaliation in case the Soviet military violated the frontier. Direct retaliation was

considered only if Warsaw-Pact troops should march into Yugoslavia and that

retaliation would extend only to economic aid, perhaps supplying some arms, but only

if Tito should approach the West. It was clear that the U.S. would not attempt to

involve itself, if the Soviets invaded Romania. This was because such involvement

could escalate into WWIII as the Soviets considered Romania an integral part of its

sphere.

A second reason for this U.S. decision was that U.S. “public opinion would perhaps

have a difficult time believing that the security of the West should be endangered to

save a communist regime which has not been shy about using Stalinist methods

against its population.” This quotation illustrated Washington’s view of Romania’s

policies on human rights. Even though the American policy makers voiced no

specifics about Romania’s domestic situation, high American officials did describe

Romanian domestic policies as Stalinist. However, as will be evident in the next

section that discusses trade, Romanian human-rights’ policies did not have any impact

on the White House’s support of trade relations with Romania.

The only negative effect human rights had on the Johnson and Nixon administrations

from 1965 to 1971 was Romania’s lack thereof, which strengthened Washington’s

decision not to act if Warsaw-Pact troops invaded Romania. However, even if

Romania had respected human rights, it is unlikely that America would have acted.

Nevertheless, the State Department was well aware of Romania’s human-rights’

policies. After all, U.S. officials described them as Stalinist. Other evidence that

shows Washington’s awareness of Romania’s human-rights’ record was a

Memorandum from the Secretary of the 303 Committee to President Johnson,

explaining the role and significance of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE

and RL). This role was to promote and encourage political liberalization and the

reduction of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. The telegram discussed the

effectiveness of RFE and RL and deduced that Soviet jamming efforts in 160

jamming centers demonstrated their potential effectiveness. The committee defended

RFE and RL in the face of some American criticisms that because they received

funding from the American Congress they were subjective and ineffective. The

committee’s response to this charge was that many private operations received

government funding without becoming instruments of the government. Though this

claim remains highly controversial and I rely very little on the judgments in this

source, I want only to write that specific to Romania, Committee 303 commented on

RFE’s open criticism of the domestic situation in Romania and hope that Romania

would improve it.

In comparison to the U.S. executive position on Romania’s human-rights’ policies

and their effect on U.S.-Romanian relations, Congress had a different reaction. As

early as 1965 Romania’s human-rights’ policies took their toll when they caused the

end of a deal of the Romanian government for Firestone to open a plant in Romania.

The White House upset by the termination of the deal called for urgent action by U.S.

to “save some of the political pieces.” Accordingly, Washington sought to develop

relations with Romania by removing the import restrictions on Romanian oil industry,

an industry which in the words of David Klein from the National Security Council

Staff was “outstanding.” The White House was determined to demonstrate that

America still sought good relations with Romania due to its independent inclinations.

Because Congress had minor role in U.S.-Romanian relations in deals such as the

Firestone one, it already sought to examine human-rights’ policies in Romania,

specifically freedom of religion. The 89th Congress conducted a special study during

its 1st Session on the Church and the State in Romania. The report began with Article

3 from the Peace Treaty with the Allied and Associated Powers Signed in Paris in

August 1947 (42 UN Treaty Series 3).

Art. 3. (1) Romania shall take all measures necessary to secure for all persons under

Romanian jurisdiction, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, the

enjoyment of human rights and the fundamental freedoms, including freedom of

expression of the press and publication, of religious worship, of political opinion, and of

public meeting.

In the face of this claim, the Senate reviewed evidence that suggested the situation in

Romania did not follow Article 3. The report discussed the atheistic educational

curriculum and propaganda. To attest these allegations, the Senate in 1966 and then

the House of Representatives in 1967 heard testimonies from Reverend Richard

Wurmbrand, a Romanian-Jew, who was a Christian imprisoned in Romania for 14

years, along with his wife for their religious beliefs and race. Evidently, human-

rights’ violations in Romania had attracted the notice of Congress even though such

policies were of little consequence in executive decisions. And, therefore, before

MFN status became an issue they were of little consequence in U.S.-Romanian

relations since the MFN trade agreement seriously involved Congress in U.S.-

Romanian relations only in 1975.

Trade

As the years progressed and Romania’s nonconformist policies grew bolder, trade

between the two states became more significant. Trade talks already had taken place

at the beginning of Ceausescu’s dictatorship, influenced by a desire to support

Romania’s assertions of independence. The Secretary of State expressed a wish that

Congress grant MFN status to Romania in 1965. The heated debate on trade with

Romania within the executive branch centered around products e.g., drilling

equipment because there was fear that the Romanians could not be trusted not to sell

or reproduce and sell American technology to the Soviets. Though human-rights’

violation existed in Romania in the 1960s, the U.S. was not concerned with those

violations primarily because the United States was just beginning to enjoy Romania’s

independence, regardless of the fact that the concerns were about religious oppression,

a subject that was to surface in the 1980s and was to change the course of U.S.-

Romanian relations. After the Firestone deal fell through in 1965, new talks began

between Romania and Goodyear three years later in 1968. Prior to their talks,

however, the American government sought to build a consensus to ensure that another

deal like the one with Firestone would not fall through again because of external

interference. The consensus was to be based on rewarding Romania for its

independent policies. Consequently, in 1966 U.S. exports began to rapidly increase,

even though Romanian exports to the U.S. had a much slower growth rate. (Major

Romanian exports included oil, wood, furniture, plywood, and chemical products as

well as agricultural products, especially corn.)

Trade became the main issue on U.S.-Romanian agenda, and in 1967 Romania

expressed a wish to trade normally with America. By this time, upon the

recommendation of the CIA, the President asked Congress to submit MFN treatment

to Romania. Washington’s trade goals for Eastern Europe in the 1960s were to expand

trade with the reward of extending MFN status to these countries in order to

encourage independence from Moscow. Washington believed that trade and political

liberties were related with the former influencing the latter. The White House

recognized that obstacles existed on Capitol Hill and was aware that in order to

increase U.S. trade with Eastern Europe without securing new legislation, or MFN

approval, it would have to liberalize American licensing requirements and offer

normal commercial credits. To receive such a license it would have to know,

however, the respective country’s policy towards the Soviet Union. American national

interest regarding Eastern Europe, as far as the White House was concerned, was not

therefore, influenced by the country’s human rights policies but rather the degree of

its independence from the Soviet Union. This policy explains why Romania so firmly

tried to convey to the U.S. its policy towards Moscow; these attempts were analyzed

above under U.S.-Romanian Relations: Diplomatic Exchanges.

Within the period from 1965 to 1971 trade became an essential component of U.S.-

Romanian relations. Even though the issue was discussed more than put into practice,

trade increased between America and Romania and a basis was laid for Romania’s

receiving MFN status in 1975. The following chapter will discuss this development in

their relations in detail.

Chapter II

Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations: 1972-1976

Domestic Situation in Romania

In contrast to the Romanian nationalism discussed in the 1960s that arose from anti-

Soviet sentiments, Ceausescu’s domestic policies shifted in the 1970s from boasting

about Romania’s heritage to creating an unprecedented personality cult campaign after

his visit to China. Mao’s little red book apparently inspired Ceausescu to initiate his own

little personality cult. Romanians could not escape him except in their own homes.

Growing up in Romania, I can at least vouch for the fact that his portrait was everywhere;

a photograph of Nicolae Ceausescu hung on the walls of every classroom in every school.

Ceausescu’s “relaxed” period of dictatorship came to an end in 1971 with his July theses

that demanded a return to rigid ideological orthodoxy and reasserted the leading role of

the party.

During this period, tensions grew between the Hungarian minority and the Romanian

government, claiming Romanian discriminatory practices against it,. The approximately

2.5 million Hungarians in Transylvania complained to the government and the West

regarding their placement in inferior positions, a decrease in Hungarian-language

education, and the confiscation of religious and archival materials that were older than

forty years. The last had just been enacted and its purpose was to enrich Romania’s

culture by having the consolidation of such materials in government archives. It also

indicated stricter censorship. Although Ceausescu responded with an interest to remedy

the situation by attending their National Convention, for the first time since 1960s, the

Hungarian national minority saw no improvement in its situation. One cannot forget,

however, as Ceausescu himself alleged, that the government of Hungary itself, a very

close satellite of the Soviet Union, could have instigated expressions of dissatisfaction by

Romania’s Hungarians. Furthermore, Ceausescu initiated more aggressive control of the

overall population, regardless of ethnic background.

As the U.S. Congress was well aware, the Romanian government also enacted a law

during this period that forbade Romanian citizens from housing any foreigners visiting

Romania, regardless of their relationship to these citizens. Furthermore, the Romanian

government forbade churches from receiving gifts from abroad, even though private

citizens were not forbidden from receiving such gifts. As will be evident later in the

chapter, although Ceausescu succeeded in improving Romania’s relations with the West,

including the United States, especially in trade, Ceausescu’s domestic policies in the

1970s brought about harsher and stricter control of its population. Consequently,

Hungary claimed that although Romania followed an independent foreign policy, the

West ought not to be deceived into believing that it promoted the basic principles that

were so important to the West. On the contrary, Hungary claimed to have established a

more democratic regime; therefore the West should not overlook human-rights’ matters

just because it (Hungary) sought tighter cooperation with the Soviets.

Many of Ceausescu’s new policies were consequences of Ceausescu’s visit to China in

1971 and his discussions with Mao, who was involved in creating a personality cult while

establishing a turnover in the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution.

Ceausescu did not destroy his party as Mao did, but as Harrington and Courtney argued

in their book, Tweaking the Nose of the Russians, Ceausescu maintained an ongoing

purge among officials, through which he maintained firm control of the party, as he

allowed no party official to gain sufficient power to threaten Ceausescu’s. One element of

the Cultural Revolution that appealed to Ceausescu was Mao’s personality-cult

campaign. Romania had never undergone anything like it previously, and Romanians

became subjugated to a surfeit of their “tovaras” or “comrade.” Ceausescu ‘s portrait

hung in just about every public building. According to a statement in the U.S. Congress,

Ceausescu’s portrait even appeared on musical record jackets. Ceausescu became

obsessed with himself and wished the Romanians to become so as well.

Nightfall was on the horizon in Romania. After nationalistic appeals in the 1960s had

won him relative popularity, Ceausescu’s obsession with power and strict control over

the Romanian people became more evident. Although Romania still enjoyed relatively

successful economic growth and welfare, personal freedom was substantially lost in the

face of Ceausescu’s ambitions and his miniature cultural revolution.

U.S.-Soviet Relations

The political atmosphere of the Cold War from 1972 to 1976 may be described as one of

building bridges. Even though the Czechoslovakia crisis had not brought the two world

powers to a showdown, it had caused further cooling in their relations and encouraged

American foreign policy ever more towards seeking relations with independent

Communist-camp countries, which defied the Soviets. In 1969 President Nixon had been

the first American President to visit the Socialist Republic of Romania and after twenty

years of no communication, the U.S. succeeded in opening relations with the People’s

Republic of China. A further breakthrough in Cold-War relations occurred in 1972 once

more, when President Nixon visited the Soviet Union and General Brezhnev returned the

visit in 1973. The latter part of Nixon’s presidency, along with President Ford’s

administration, brought Washington and Moscow to the negotiation tables more than

even before; the signed treaties of cooperation ranged from the medical field to the

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which reached its final stage at

Helsinki in the summer of 1975. By 1975, however, the White House had become so

successful in its bridge-building policy that it began meeting opposition in Congress,

which shifted political attention away from building bridges to asking, “how those

bridges are being built.”

American foreign policy shifted at the top level after President Nixon addressed the

nation on the State of the Union in January 1975. He implored the American people to

recognize that “…as we turn from an era of confrontation to one of cooperation, trade and

commerce become more important and therefore, we must move away from a position of

virtual economic hegemony in the world to a new role in a more interdependent world

economy…avoiding economic and political disruptions associated with international

monetary turmoil and restrictive trade.” With China and the Soviet Union opening their

markets to the West, the United States could gain much economically. U.S.-Soviet two-

way trade reached a record of $1.4 billion in 1973. Both powers sought mutually

beneficial ties in trade and were able to meet at the negotiating table after agreeing to

cooperate. The United Sates and the Soviet Union joined in negotiations at the highest

level when President Nixon visited the Soviet Union in 1972 and in May 1972 both sides

signed a Basic Principles Agreement to which both vowed to adhere in U.S.-Soviet

relations. After years of confrontation, Washington and Moscow entered into a new stage

of cooperation, which de facto led to a relaxation of tensions. During Nixon’s address to

the People of the Soviet Union he referred to the new era as one of “learning

cooperation” and declared the signing of the Limitation of Strategic Nuclear Arms a

historic milestone toward world peace. The establishment of guidelines and principles by

which the two Cold-War bipolar powers would restrict themselves in their actions toward

each other in hopes of promoting world peace was surely a major step in relaxing

tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union. The Soviet opening toward the West also

encouraged greater cooperation between the Eastern and Western blocs and proved

fruitful for countries like Romania. Moscow’s encouragement of détente provided

Romania, and other similar nations, seeking ties with the West, with leeway in their

foreign policy obviating Moscow’s policy that had sought bloc subordination and

participation in its anti-Western policy, even though this policy had been unsuccessful in

the Romanian case.

The U.S. and USSR ventured into untested waters and both were uncertain of what to

expect from their first summit meetings in 1972. The arms race deserved primary

attention from both parties and they signed the Interim Agreement on Offensive Strategic

Weapons, Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems – which limited each country to two AMD

sites. The Soviet Union and the U.S. leaders participated in numerous mutual visits and

within three years their heads of state exchanged visits each year. Secretary General

Brezhnev visited the U.S. in 1973 and President Nixon visited the Soviet Union once

again in 1974, when once more they signed further agreements. Before leaving for the

Soviet Union Nixon entitled his trip a “journey of peace that sought to strengthen

bilateral relations between the strongest nations in the world and develop areas of

cooperation to displace confrontation in other critical areas of the world.” Other

agreements included the Energy Agreement between United States and the Soviet Union

on Cooperation in the field of Energy, Cooperation in the field of Housing and other

Construction, Agreement on Heart Research, Industrial and Technical Cooperation,

Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, and Limitation of Underground Nuclear

Weapon Tests.

Despite these encouraging advances in U.S.-Soviet cooperation, setbacks in their

relations occurred during this period as well, which caused tensions in American

domestic politics between the executive branch and the legislature. Trade agreements

reached between the U.S. and the Soviets were abruptly halted in 1975 when Congress

insisted that the Soviets allow freedom of emigration. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment

was passed by Congress in 1974 and created a link between trade, on the one hand, and

human-rights’ policies, specifically emigration practices of the Soviet Union. It required

that the basic right to emigrate be respected by any non-market country that wished to

receive credits or tariff benefits from the U.S. As trade increased between the Soviets and

Americans, they sought a normalized trade, which implied the removal of restrictive trade

barriers that were applied to the USSR, having a socialist economy. However, the Soviets

rejected further trade talks in 1975 by insisting that the emigration prerequisite was an act

of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation and instead initiated an even

harsher emigration policy. In President Ford’s address to Congress on U.S. Foreign

Policy he called for remedial legislation due to Jackson-Vanik’s reverse effects upon

humanitarian principles as well as to America’s financial losses in trade with the Soviet

Union. The reverse humanitarian outcome was Moscow’s decision to apply stricter

emigration policies. When trade talks terminated between Washington and Moscow,

Western Europe and Japan stepped into the breach by extending Moscow over $8 billion

worth in credits. In American bilateral trade talks with the Soviet Union, Congress

seemed more concerned with the means and the presidency with the ends.

Another event that caused further tension between the presidency and Congress was

Helsinki in 1975. American participation in the final meeting at Helsinki for the

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was an event that some thought

misrepresented American interests. Although President Ford claimed he had gone on a

mission of peace and progress on behalf of all Americans, some viewed the conference as

an American betrayal of Eastern Europe. Among the signed documents in Helsinki, one

officially recognized the existing boundaries after WWII and in essence recognized

Communist East Germany, and the Soviet takeovers of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina

and Hertza, the revised Polish borders, the Soviet integration of Latvia, Lithuania and

Estonia into the Soviet Union, and the virtual American recognition of Soviet dominance

in Eastern Europe. Even though Helsinki on one face of the coin represented a

humanitarian breakthrough in East-West relations during the Cold War, it also signified

to some extent American weakness, Soviet victory and a détente policy that did not

insure Ford’s two-way street.

“The Statement of Basic Principles” under the Nixon administration formally

established a foundation for future developments in U.S.-Romanian relations and was

continued under President Ford. Upon taking office as President of the United States,

Ford transmitted a message of continued friendship to President Ceausescu that

followed Nixon’s policy on creating relations of close friendship and beneficial

cooperation with Romania. The highlight of their bilateral relations came under Ford

with the signed trade agreement at the Peles Castle in Sinaia, Romania by Presidents

Ford and Ceausescu, after Congressional approval. Immediately after the Conference

on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki, Ford visited Romania

and during the visit Congress approved the President’s request to waive the

emigration clause, thereby granting Romania MFN status on the condition that

Romania would improve its emigration practices. Although presidential trade

agreement requests for Romania had been submitted to Congress in 1965 and 1973, it

was not until 1975 that Congress finally approved it.

Justification of the administration’s policy regarding Romania emphasized

Romania’s independence from the Soviet Union, politically and economically.

Among the many speeches made in both Houses of Congress, Representative Findley

approached the House of Representatives in June 1975 in favor of the trade

agreement by arguing that the United States considered Romania “a unique country

with a special role to play in East-West relations.” According to Representative

Findley, Romania was the only Warsaw-Pact member to refuse joint military

maneuvers on its soil or the assignment of its troops beyond its frontiers. It was also

the only Warsaw-Pact member to join the International Bank for Reconstruction and

Development, the International Monetary Fund, and GATT; moreover it traded more

with non-Communist countries than with the Soviet Union and its allies.

Some members in Congress, however, were not so easily convinced since Romania’s

foreign policy was not their only consideration, as it was by and large for the

administration. Approaching the Congressional debate on the trade agreement,

American constituents became more assertive in calling attention to Romania’s

human-rights’ record. Therefore, realizing the severity of the situation in U.S.

Congress, Ceausescu stopped over in Washington for a day, on June 1, 1975 to confer

with President Ford about the granting of MFN. Nevertheless, Romania finally

succeeded in gaining MFN status two months later mainly because Romania’s

independence took precedence for a majority in Congress.

To understand the different variables that began playing in American-Romanian

relations, Congressional comments on Romania’s National Holiday serve as a good

example. May 10th was the traditional national holiday that commemorated the

founding of the Kingdom of Romania and had been Romanian Independence Day,

but it had been replaced with May 9th, the national holiday imposed by the Soviets,

marking the Soviets’ liberation of Romania from Nazi occupation on that day.

Congressional comments on Romania’s National Holiday conveyed two contesting

views that reflected American perceptions of Romania and their mutual relations. On

one side of the spectrum were those who applauded Romania’s independence from

Moscow and viewed Romania strictly within U.S.-Soviet relations framework,

including the administration and most in Congress. For example, Representative

Price of Illinois and Senator Proxmire both commented on the subject in 1974 in

reference to Soviet domination of Romania, blaming repression on the Soviets. At the

other end of the spectrum were those who blamed the Romanian government for

Romania’s lack of freedom. The following table based on the debates in the

Congressional Records between 1973-1976 lists the supporters of those emphasizing

Romania’s independence and those emphasizing Romania’s human-rights’ record, on

the question as to which issue should govern U.S.-Romanian relations. Most of the

vocal members of Congress supported one of the other side of the debate, but a few,

like as Representative James Delaney, took a middle road by acknowledging both

issues. Nevertheless, up to 1976, Congress as a whole stressed concerns for

Romania’s independence and blamed the Soviets for Romanians’ lack of freedom,

not Ceausescu’s government.

Attention to the Soviet Union’s Attention to Romanian Human

Sen. Allott

Sen. Hartke

1973 Rep. Ralph S. Regula (5) Rep. Edward Derwinski (4)

Rep. James J. Delaney Rep. Charles W. Whalen Jr.

Rep. William S. Broomfield Rep. Ralph S. Regula

Rep. Lawrence J. Hogan Rep. Carl Albert

Sen. Proxmire

1974 Sen. Price (4) Rep. Charles W. Whalen, Jr. (4)

Rep. James Delaney Rep. Thomas E. Morgan

Sen. Proxmire Rep. James Delaney

Sen. Byrd Sen. Taft

1975 Rep. Peter W. Rodino, Jr. (1) Sen. Williams (1)

1976 Rep. James Delaney (1)

The Administration’s take on U.S.- Romanian relations had a very different perspective,

and hoped their bilateral relations could by and large be measured by their diplomatic

exchanges. As presidential visits continued over the years, other diplomatic exchanges

between Romania and the U.S. increased. Although most of the exchanges were

somehow related to trade, Romania and the United States also joined in cultural and

educational exchanges as well. Responding to Ceausescu’s invitation, a chorus group, the

Royal Crusaders of Pennsylvania, traveled to Romania as “Ambassadors of Friendship,”

hoping to make a contribution to international friendship. Romania returned the visit one

year later as President Ford greeted a Romanian choral group in the Cabinet Room,

accompanied by Romanian Ambassador Corneliu Bogdan and Harry Morgan, President

of Friendship Ambassadors, INC. The U.S. and Romania joined in a Consular

Convention signed on July 5, 1972. Leonard Marks, Chairman of the U.S. Advisory

Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs, soon thereafter visited

Romania, and both countries signed accords of cooperation and exchange in culture,

education, science, and technology in December 1974. The latter was a five-year

cooperation agreement and included a two-year exchange program of several hundred

people, including scholars. But most of all, the accord was the first political agreement of

any kind signed between the two governments. A Romanian delegation of various

individuals also came to the U.S. in March 1972 to discuss trade and on December 4,

1973 a Romanian Convention convened in Texas, where both government signed an

agreement with respect to Taxes on Income. Other exchanges between the two countries

included the following: Representative Adams of Washington traveled to Bucuresti in

1974 for an Inter-parliamentary Union Meeting; Senator Percy of Washington was in

Romania in 1974 for a Population Conference; Claude S. Brinegar, Secretary of

Transportation, visited Romania in June 1974; Representative Biester of Pennsylvania

visited Romania in January 1975 in accordance with trade agreement; Amrom H. Katz of

the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency visited Romania in April 1975; Phil

Campbell, the Under Secretary of Agriculture, visited Romania in May 1975; Col.

General Ion Coman, the Romanian Chief of the General Staff, in June 1975was the first

Deputy Defense Minister to visit the Pentagon and was the first such visit by a Warsaw-

Pact nation’s Chief of Staff; Dr. Virginia Y. Trotter, Assistant Secretary for Education,

Department of Health, Education and Welfare, visited Romania in October 1975;

Secretary of Agriculture Butz visited Romania in October 1975; Congressman Father

Drinan visited Romania in October 1975 to see how MFN status was operating among

Romanians; Ion Paton, Deputy PM of Romania, met with President Ford and the

Secretary of Commerce in November 1975; Stefan Andrei, Secretary of International

Affairs of Romania, met with President Ford in June 1976; and Counselor to Ceausescu,

Vasile Pungan, met with President Ford to discuss bilateral relations and brought a letter

of friendship from Ceausescu to Ford.

From the lengthy list above, it is evident that diplomatic exchanges increased

significantly from the time President Nixon moved into the White House. Furthermore, it

is important to recognize the increase in Congressional involvement in U.S.-Romanian

relations and travel to Romania to discuss either trade or to “test” the waters; most found

matters favorable. Before granting MFN to Romania, at least three Congressmen had

visited Romania to discuss trade and Congress was directly involved in determining U.S.-

Romanian relations as it pertained to trade, which was an inherently important part in

their bilateral relations. Therefore, we see increased Congressional activity in U.S-

Romanian relations.

Significance of Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations

Romania’s human-rights’ record did not bear much significance in U.S. foreign policy

until the signed trade agreement of August 3, 1975 legally bound American trade policies

to Romanian emigration policies, by in fact waiving of the emigration clause on the

requisite in the hopes that emigration policies would improve. Prior to 1975 the U.S.

could not legally make insinuations about Romanian human-rights’ policies without

damaging its relations with Romania, as the Romanian government would have viewed

that as interfering in its internal affairs. However, after 1975, the U.S. government could

legitimately discuss and convey concern when it chose regarding human rights in

Romania because the agreement in 1975 technically bound Romania to respect basic

human rights i.e. free emigration, freedom of religion, and non-discriminating policies

regarding ethnicity. The “Basket 3” portion of the Helsinki Declaration bound all thirty-

five signatories to respect human rights and made human rights a legitimate discussion

point on the political agenda within European-American-Canadian relations. As the

CSCE agreements were merely declarations and not legally binding, the Romanians,

having special interest in CSCE for its other declarations regarding self-determination

and non-interference policies, had to at least seem to comply with all signed Helsinki

declarations if Romania wanted the self-determination respected.

A second event that introduced human rights to U.S.-Romanian relations came only a few

days after Helsinki; this was the granting of MFN status to Romania on the understanding

that it would promote open emigration. Congressional records and White House papers

indicate an overwhelming increase in interest in human-rights’ discussions as trade talks

and Helsinki approached. The White House was indeed aware of Ceausescu’s human-

rights’ policies through its own sources but also through Congress. Congress sent many

concerned memos to the Department of State and the President regarding human rights in

Romania, especially about minority rights and emigration policies. For example,

Professor Marvin Jackson of Arizona State University drafted a letter that reached

President Ford’s office. He had applied to the Romanian authorities in 1974 to marry a

Romanian woman but was denied permission and for one year had been trying to solve

the situation with the Romanian authorities without success. Therefore, he wrote both

Congress and the President asking for assistance. Jackson asked President Ford to

mention the circumstances to President Ceausescu, knowing that if the “trade bill

passe[d] Romania [would] be given consideration for MFN and on that condition

Romania [would] not want [to impose] unreasonable delays in approving marriages

between Americans and Romanians.” Human rights became a give-and-take situation; if

Romania wanted trade benefits and credits, it had to give human rights’ assurances.

Jackson was to be married and reunited with his wife one year later. With this in mind,

Romanian and American relations entered a new phase.

The State Department’s comfort with the negotiations was made evident through Henry

Kissinger’s memo to President Ford, sent at the time Ford sought Congressional approval

for the trade agreement with Romania; he assured Ford that completed negotiations

would lead to substantial improvement in Romanian emigration practices. According to

Kissinger’s memo, the Romanians privately assured the U.S. that they would act

sympathetically on the few hundred cases of divided families, implying Romanian

acceptance of the newly established guidelines. Congressional concerns’ regarding

Romanian emigration practices, however, soon evolved into minority-rights’ concerns

about the German and especially the Hungarian minorities of Transylvania. In a

memorandum in 1976, Jeanne Davis, Staff Secretary of the National Security Council,

replied to Congressman Bauman’s questions regarding the treatment of minorities in

Romania and provided him with a report completed by the State Department that

addressed a number of minority-rights-related issues. The State Department’s report had

a generally positive outlook regarding minority rights in Romania, indicating that there

was no actual decline in education taught in Hungarian; instead the report even found an

increase in Hungarian radio and television in Romania. The use of the Hungarian

language officially and in public was observed and Magyars were generally found in

State and Party office in approximate proportion to their percentage in the general

population. The report also indicated areas in which the Romanian government fell short,

such as the harassment of Hungarian churches; but it noted that Romanian authorities in

general adopted a “cautious” treatment of organized religion and that policy was not

discriminatorily directed at Hungarians but rather at the population at large. The question,

therefore, remains as to why emigration concerns evolved into minority-rights’ concerns

rather than concerns about freedom of religion since Romania’s authorities closed

churches on Sunday evenings. The answer is found in the Congressional Record which

mostly quotes concerns of constituents, who here happened to be Hungarian and because

of the lack of the Protestant Religious movement that is underway in the 1980s. In any

case, the emigration issue became a symbol in the American pursuit of international

human rights by channeling through other human-rights’ concerns, and so the

government claimed that human-rights’ concerns had a role in America’s international

relations.

Cold War + Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe -- > Romanian independent foreign policy -- > U.S.-

Romanian diplomatic exchanges -- > increase in U.S.-Romanian trade -- > Trade Agreement, 1975 +

open emigration sub clause -- > human rights introduction in bilateral relations

Consequently, American-Romanian relations developed from 1965 to 1976 through a

process that started with a willingness to develop bilateral relations due to Romania’s

independent foreign policy. This willingness was followed by diplomatic exchanges and

eventually developed into an agreement outlining the basic guidelines for American

relations with Romania. Further American-Romanian exchanges led to an increase in

trade, which led to the trade Agreement of 1975 and Romanian MFN status. The trade

agreement linked trade with emigration policies, which led to greater Congressional

concern over human rights as constituents interpreted the emigration sub clause of the

trade Agreement as a means to raise other human-rights’ concerns about Romania.

In the words of Senator Brooke, the U.S. ought to have been cautious when it considered

extending preferential treatment to Romania, so it could not have been misunderstood as

giving “blanket approval of the policies of the Romanian government toward human

rights, especially of those [toward] the more disadvantageous national minorities.” From

1972 to 1976 Congress and private citizens expressed heightened concern about

Ceausescu’s human-rights’ record. During this period the Congressional Record cites at

least twenty-seven instances that emphasized Romania’s poor record on human rights or

lack thereof. President Ford’s papers include at least eleven specific requests for the

President’s assistance in circumstances in which human rights were involved i.e., some

religious persecution, mostly minority oppression and bans on emigration for those who

sought to reunite with families in the United States. Presidential responses consistently

expressed gratitude for the inquiries and assured its recipients that America remained

committed to human rights and that the government would make this commitment clear

to the Romanian government.

Romania’s human-rights’ record worsened from the late sixties into the seventies, even

though its relations with the U.S. improved overall. Romania was increasingly attacked

on different levels about its ethnic-minority policies toward Hungarians most of all,

although Germans were included. Just before Congress ratified the trade agreement

between the U.S. and Romania, Representative Henry Helstoski of New Jersey spoke

against the agreement that was to grant MFN status to Romania. In his speech, Helstoski

emphasized the Romanization of vocational, economic, scientific, and other specialized

high schools and noted that former Hungarian entrance examinations were replaced by

Romanian language ones; moreover, all local national historical records had been

confiscated by the Romanian government, including Hungarian ones, because of a newly-

enacted law dealing with national cultural treasures over forty years old. Hungarians also

claimed that they were predominately given jobs in poor regions upon graduation.

Representative Michel Harrington also spoke in May 1975 against Romanian human-

rights’ policies and he entered for the record a letter sent by the Christian Mission to the

Communist World that cited specific examples of religious persecution under

Ceausescu’s regime. According to the letter, a certain Vasile Rascol had been arrested in

Bucuresti on May 25, 1974 for distributing Bibles and Christian literature and sentenced

to a two-year imprisonment, while at least four individuals had been fined at least 1,000

lei (Romanian currency) for praying in their apartments, and Christians in the village of

Ruja in Sibiu had paid more than 30,000 lei in fines for holding religious meetings.

Another aspect of human rights that concerned the American Congress was

restrictions on Jewish emigration. In comparison to the early 1970s Romanian

emigration policies relaxed in 1974 but tightened again in 1975 just a few weeks

before the U.S.-Romanian trade agreement came before Congress. As evident in the

number below that represent the number of Jews granted permission to emigrate,

especially in 1975 once Romania received MFN status, emigration policies eased

whenever MFN status was under Congressional review, implying no significant

change in Ceausescu’s human-rights’ policies; therefore, when the time came to pass

MFN status, trade considerations won over human rights.

Numbers of Romanian Jews Permitted to Emigrate from 1971 to 1976

1971……………………………………1,650

1972……………………………………2,650

1973……………………………………3,700

1974……………………………………3,700

1975:

January………………………… 70

February……………………….. 45

March………………………….. 100

April…………………………… 80

May……………………………. 50

June……………………………. 210

July*..………………………….. 430 (* Month during which MFN status came under

Congressional review)

August…………………………. 250

September……………………… 295

October………………………… 360

November……………………… 140

December……………………… 110

__________

Total 2,140

1976:

January………………………… 350

February……………………….. 243

March………………………….. 103

April…………………………… 51

__________

Total 1,902

Human rights became an issue of discussion in U.S.-Romanian relations in the U.S.

Congress and between the two states primarily for the reason that in 1974 Congress

passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act that denied the President

authority to grant MFN status to communist countries that did not practice open

emigration policies. Consequently, as trade was a crucial factor in U.S. relations with

Romania, and a reward for its independence, Congress gained for itself a direct role in

our relations with Romania. Owing to constituent opinion different groups voiced

various interests and opinions to Congress which ultimately, were recorded in the

record and came to have effect on certain Congressmen’s views on U.S.-Romanian

relations.

Trade

The climax in two-way trade between the U.S. and Romania was of course the trade

agreement that granted Romania Most Favored Nation (MFN) status in August 1975.

MFN did not imply preferential trade treatment, but rather normal trade that overruled

the discriminatory trade barriers imposed on socialist countries, including Romania,

and prompted mutually beneficial economic ties. Romania’s interest in MFN status

was obvious. Romania was a developing country that sought rapid industrialization

and, therefore, needed advanced technology from the West. However, in order to buy

from the West it needed to sell to the West to get hard currency, and selling to the

West was difficult to do with discriminatory tariffs. (Note: Romanian currency, the

“leu” was not recognized on the world market.) American interests in granting MFN

status to Romania, however, may not be as obvious at first glance.

The most obvious reason for the U.S. granting MFN status to Romania was to

encourage its independence from the Soviet Union. Thus, MFN status was viewed as

a reward for Romania’s independence. Following is another brief list of Romanian

actions that were perceived as reflecting independence from Moscow: despite Soviet

disapproval, Romania continued relations with Israel in 1967 after the war with

Egypt; condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; was the only Warsaw-Pact

country to refuse pact-members’ military movement on its territory and refused to

allow its own military to act beyond its territorial boundaries; it joined GATT, the

IMF, and accepted credits from the World Bank; and agreed to sign a trade agreement

with the U.S., that included changing its emigration policies, after the Soviets backed

out of similar talks. American foreign policy promoted independence from Moscow

and it wanted to reward such action. It would have been impolitic for the U.S. to

verbally promote independence from the Soviet Union and then leave the independent

parties out in the cold. When President Ford urged Congress in July 1975 to approve

the trade agreement with Romania, he reminded Congress that it should approve the

agreement for “At stake is a basic principle of U.S. foreign policy to weaken once-

monolithic Soviet control over its eastern European empire.” Furthermore, American

economic relations with Romania fostered its increasing economic independence from

Moscow. If Romania could look nowhere else but to the Soviet bloc for trade, then it

would have had no other choice but to submit to the Soviets.

The reality however, was broader, for other Western powers recognized Romania’s

potential as a new market and developed their own economic relations with

Ceausescu. Great Britain, for example, signed a trade agreement with Romania in

September 1975, as mentioned earlier. By January 1975 Romania had already secured

substantial financial credits from Great Britain, France, and West Germany and was

shown to have the highest growth rates in Europe with its GNP growth at an average

of 9% from 1971-1973 due to its substantial imports of Western technology. President

Nixon made evident the shifts in U.S. economic policies in his International

Economic Report of 1974. As the U.S. shifted its foreign policy from containing

communism to détente, it altered its economic policy to accommodate a new

international order, which included trade in détente. At a National Association of

Broadcasters meeting in March 1974 he admitted that the administration was well

known for reopening talks with the Chinese and when asked why, his answer was

because they were the leaders of of the world population. The answer in economic

terms was new potential for a massive open market of which Romania was a part.

President Nixon emphasized America’s economic position in a changing world in his

international economic report when he claimed that America's new challenge lay in

the face of further delayed progress toward world trade as it was vital that America

move forward in a multinational attempt to reduce trade barriers. Under the Nixon

administration and continuing with Ford’s, the U.S. adopted a new economic policy

that implied a dramatic change in the balance of trade. Since the 1940s the U.S.

pursued a policy that prevented trade with the Communist bloc as trade with these

countries was seen as threatening national security and the policy of containing

communism. Senator Walter Mondale supported granting MFN status to Romania

even in 1973 when he claimed that the pervious policy of imposing trade barriers on

the communist bloc was no longer applicable and de facto harmed American interests,

as it encouraged Western competitors and allowed continued economic and political

domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union.

The purpose of the proposed trade agreement in 1973 was to “maintain U.S.

objectives in building a peaceful, democratic world, to promote constructive relations

with Romania and to provide a framework helpful to private U.S. firms conducting

business relations in Romania by instituting regular government-to-government

negotiations concerning commercial and other matters of mutual interest…and to

expand markets for products of the U.S in Romania by creating similar opportunities

for the products of Romania to compete in U.S. markets on a non-discriminatory

basis.”

The Trade Act of 1973, which Congress did not pass, did not consider human- rights’

policies. First of all, nothing in its content hinted at a relationship between trade and

human rights. Although it did claim to maintain U.S. objectives in building a

democratic world, it was asserted within the context of containing Soviet hegemony.

This did not imply, however, that the U.S. would not have wished Romania to respect

its citizens’ basic rights as recognized by the UN Human Rights Declaration, which

Romania had ratified. It did imply, however, that no relationship existed between

trade and human rights, as would the Trade Agreement of 1975. Second of all, at a

Question-Answer forum about trade relations with Romania, President Ford stated

that the Trade Agreement of 1975 which he had sent to Congress dealt only with

trade, when he was asked what it conveyed about freedom of emigration from

Romania. The tug-of-war that was discussed earlier in the chapter existed not only

within Congress, but also between Congress and the administration. An article in the

Washington Post in July 1975 compared presidential and congressional

responsibilities in the trade agreement with Romania, and reminded its readers that

there was not supposed to be a duel between Congress and the President. Evidently, as

far as the administration was concerned, trade and emigration, or any other aspect of

human rights, were not interrelated and it was to be Congress, which introduced

human rights as a variable in U.S.-Romanian bilateral relations.

Congress, however, did introduce human rights-issues’ into economic relations with

Romania. Both Houses of Congress passed the trade agreement and renewed

Romania’s MFN status in July 1976. When it came under Congressional review,

however, Congress did not succeed in giving equal value to these two variables: trade

and human-rights’ policies. A quotation from Representative Waggonner of Louisiana

conveyed the earlier spirit that prevailed in the Nixon and Ford Administrations in

Congress. “Passing this legislation [referring to the Trade Agreement] does not mean

the U.S. will be putting a stamp of approval on everything that goes on in Romania

.…[We want to] normalize trade relations with Romania because of its efforts to be

independent.” The views of the opposing side were described in the human-rights’

section of the chapter. The U.S-Romanian Trade Agreement presented a tug-of-war in

Congress and also between Congress and the administration in which one side could

win and the other lose. During the Nixon and Ford Administrations the realist side (or

non “human rightists”) won and that side continued to win, despite conditions in the

agreement inserted in 1975, until 1987 when MFN status for Romania was finally

revoked because of Romania’s human-rights’ violations.

Two-way trade between the U.S. and Romania reached approximately $80 million in

1972. In 1973, however, it grew to a record of $1.4 billion and both states expected

trade to reach close to $2 billion by 1976-1977. Romania’s interests in trade with

America were strong because Romania sought U.S. agricultural goods and

sophisticated Western technology, and America’s strong interest in trade with

Romania was encouraged by the fact that U.S. exports more than doubled imports.

Even though American trade with communist countries was only 2% of America’s

trade with all nations, its trade with Romania was 10% of that 2% and exports to

Romania tallied nearly 20% of American total positive trade surplus. Furthermore, as

America and the rest of the Western world suffered from the oil embargo, Romania’s

major export to the U.S. was oil, $76 million worth in 1974, 75% of all U.S. imports

from Romania. American trade with Romania was not indispensable to the U.S but it

was beneficial. Romania sought agricultural goods, oil drilling technology and

equipment and also flood detection and early warning systems, credits, and long-term

economic assistance such as for the construction of textile plants. A trade agreement

that granted Romania MFN status had been introduced in Congress in 1965 and 1973

but Congress had rejected it both times. The trade agreement between the United

States and Romania that Congress did pass was signed by both parties in Bucuresti on

April 2, 1975 and entered into force on August 3, 1975.

Due to a broad Trade Act of 1974 MFN status or nondiscriminatory treatment to

communist countries was subject to their emigration policies and Congress had to

waive the sections prohibiting MFN to these countries, subsections (a) and (b) of

Section 402, on a one-by-one basis. Following long and intense debates on the matter,

the Senate on July 25, 1975 voted for an agreement that waived the emigration clause

on the basis that Romanian emigration policies would improve with the lifted trade

restrictions, and the House on July 27th, thereby conveying broad support for U.S.-

Romanian trade relations in both branches, the executive and legislative.

Chapter III

Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations: 1976-1981

Domestic Situation in Romania

The latter part of the 1970s was a period in which Nicolae Ceausescu faced various

problems at home. The continual attention in the U.S. Congress for family

reunification caused instability in Romania’s relations with the United States. Every

year the MFN status for Romania was submitted to Congressional review and the

uncertainty of the outcome hindered possible joint ventures and limited Romania’s

economic planning, even though trade with America was increasingly greater. In

retaliation or as an attempt to cool the situation, Ceausescu became more openly

irritated with Romanians seeking to emigrate. In June of 1976 he publicly declared

those seeking to emigrate as “traitors” and claimed that it was not a humanitarian

issue. Consequently emigration became harder and more devious. Romanians who

sought to emigrate were questioned and discouraged by local party representatives

within their community and were expelled from work and their children from school.

These policies continued throughout Ceausescu’s regime. For example, after receiving

an invitation to the 1986 Chess Olympics in Switzerland, my father requested

permission to participate, but was denied it owing to the testimony of some loyal

Communists living in our apartment building. My father went eventually, but only

through higher intervention. After my father sought political asylum in Austria, my

mother was followed and questioned by the securitate (security police). Ceausescu’s

control over the population was not necessarily achieved only through torture or

frequent heinous crimes as others claimed (although these were committed), but he

succeeded in maintaining firm control through fear. The securitate was not

everywhere, but informers were. Ceausescu maintained a highly centralized system

through bribes and, if unsuccessful, through blackmail. If a family member defected

or wished to defect to the West, a brother or a sister, or even parents, willingly,

perhaps under foreseen pressure, declared before the securitate that they would not

have any further relations with their sibling or child in order to keep their jobs. This

was Romania’s situation at the turn of the decade.

Aside from those desperately wanting to emigrate, were also those who aspired for a

free Romania, but wanted to continue their aspirations on Romanian soil. Writer Paul

Goma was such an individual who became a bit of an embarrassment for the

Romanian government. For many years his books were published only in the West,

particularly in France and Britain, and in 1977 he wrote a letter of protest to the

Romanian government, which also became known beyond Romanian borders. The

letter was also signed by many others and as its contents were leaked it caused a stir in

Romania and the West. Ceausescu retaliated by denouncing those who carried out

propaganda against the Romanian government and placed them under house arrest,

including Goma. Goma’s spirit persisted though, and he was finally allowed to

publish his novels in Romania, and he emigrated to France in 1978. Other signatories

were also eventually granted permission to emigrate.

During this period, Romanian defectors attracted publicity because of their positions.

Goma was an internationally-recognized writer; next came Karoly Kiraly, a

Hungarian who resigned from the Romanian Communist Party Central Committee in

1975; he also wrote a letter in 1978 condemning Ceausescu’s human-rights’ policies

especially the unfair treatment of minorities. This letter also reached the West. Three

top Romanian gymnast trainers, including Bela Karoly (subsequently U.S. Olympic

Gymnast trainer) defected to the U.S. in 1981. One defection, however, that was

highly unexpected to the Romanian government, including Ceausescu, was Mihai

Pacepa’s defection in July 1978. Pacepa was a Lieutenant General and Deputy

Director of the Romanian Intelligence Service and was Ceausescu’s advisor and spy

chief. According to Pacepa, Ceausescu’s inhumanity drove him to near insanity and

defection was his only escape. Pacepa’s defection was extremely important to

Romania and the U.S. as he provided valuable information to the Americans.

Furthermore, in 1977 Romania suffered from a devastating earthquake, which added

to its domestic problems. The earthquake registered 7.5 on the Richter scale and killed

approximately 1,500 civilians, injured thousands more, and destroyed over 4,000

buildings, 12,000 housing units, and 200 industrial enterprises. Romania’s economy

hurt from the quake, but Romania tightened its relations with the U.S. through

American aid and sympathy.

Romania’s domestic situation during the late 1970s suffered from Ceausescu’s

disregard of human rights as it had since his coming to power. The difference,

however, was that his reputation began to suffer internationally in this period because

of his harsh regime. The facts above became more widely known through defections

and publicity in the West about highly ranked dissidents, including those in his

government, like Kiraly and Pacepa. Although Pacepa’s defection was not highly

publicized until the 1980s, he defied Ceausescu as he had so successfully defied the

Russians. By the late 1970s human rights gained so much attention that it at least

slightly threatened Ceausescu’s up-to-then secure position at home and

internationally.

U.S.-Soviet Relations

The politics and rules of the Cold War in the late 1970s changed drastically from the

1960s. During the 1960s American policy had not differentiated between the Soviets

and the rest of the Warsaw Pact. Soviet actions equaled Eastern European actions,

until Romania introduced itself as a potential maverick in Eastern Europe. By

maintaining its independence through the 70s, Romania caused American foreign

policy to shift and to take Romania’s independence into consideration. By the late

1970s, this path continued as Hungary caught up with Romania and was also granted

MFN status. This American policy of differentiating among the various Communist

states of Eastern Europe was particularly important, though, when America clashed

with the Soviet Union. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a blow to U.S.-Soviet

relations, but it is important to recognize that it did not affect American relations with

Eastern Europe. In testimony before the Subcommittee on Trade, Representative Lee

Hamilton testified that trade with Romania, and the continuation of MFN status for

Romania advanced U.S. national interest at a time when America faced a

confrontational phase with the Soviets. He continued by stressing that the U.S. did not

hold Eastern European countries responsible for Soviet actions and, therefore, sought

sanctions against Soviet Union alone.

Relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated through the 70s. The decade

had begun with opened discussions for cooperation between the two states but, as

noted in the previous chapter, the Soviet refusal to negotiate a trade agreement based

on its emigration policies caused tension in their relations. Tension and American

displeasure with Russia further intensified over Soviet aggression in Afghanistan in

the name of Marxism-Leninism. Congressional discussions in 1975 emphasized the

means being used to build bridges with the Soviet Union because it seemed that the

Soviet Union was enjoying too many triumphs in the Cold War. Increasing support

for communism in France and Italy, along with the contemporary developments in

Portugal threatened American prestige in its war against communism. But these did

not compare to the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan and the establishment of a new

communist government there. Afghanistan was Czechoslovakia revisited and harmed

Soviet relations with the United States. As President Nixon recognized in one address

to the nation, trade equaled power in the economic world and could not be separated

from America’s international policies. Thus, the economic sanctions imposed on the

Soviet Union after the invasion of Afghanistan made perfect sense. After two

catastrophic wars and a potential nuclear war in less than half a century, the

international consensus shifted from military confrontation to economic sanctions.

Military confrontations continued to occur, but in decreasing numbers as sanctions

increased in place confrontation. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan injured its

relations with the U.S. as well as its international reputation after it had seemed to

respect the principle of territorial integrity at Helsinki.

Furthermore, even during American negotiations with the Soviets on the SALT

agreements in 1978 the Soviet Union still received negative publicity in the U.S. and,

once again, from the Romanians. In 1979 and in 1980 the Romanian community in

the U.S. protested the forcible annexations at the end of War World II of three

Romanian provinces. The Romanian Americans in the U.S. publicly declared that no

relations should exist between the Soviet Union and Romania as long as the Russians

refused to give back the rights of those people to self-determination and expressed

this request in a letter to the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. The Russians’ “abysmal”

international-relations record, as described in Congress, served Romania, but more so,

it also threatened détente as the Soviets persisted in conveying their zeal to expand the

spread of communism.

Within this Cold-War context this chapter will discuss America’s bilateral relations

with Romania. It is no surprise that Ceausescu was able to maintain a favorable

reputation regarding Romania’s international relations. As its Soviet neighbor invaded

Afghanistan, Ceausescu received credit for bringing Egypt and Israel to the

negotiating table, a step toward peace in the Middle East. Ceausescu seemed a hero

compared with his larger neighbor. Therefore, although his human-rights’ violations

became increasingly publicized, his image in international relations carried enough

weight to prevent human rights from significantly swaying American foreign policy.

International Perception of Romania:

As just mentioned, Ceausescu gained much prestige as a world leader due to his role

in bringing Egypt’s President Anwar-el Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister, Menahem

Begin together in Jerusalem for a historic meeting. He was internationally recognized

as a leader who strove for world peace, whereas the Soviets strove for communist

domination. Regardless of Ceausescu’s “other” reputation as a human-rights’ violator,

as long as the Soviet Union was America’s number one enemy and when all the issues

were tallied up, Romanian independence from the Soviet Union always came out on

top. In the following chapters, this relationship will be more evident when Gorbachev

initiated a new series of talks about bettering relations, therefore, terminating the

Soviets’ status as the primary enemy of the U.S. In that new equation, Romanian

independence was no longer to carry the weight that it had in the 1960s and 1970s; as

a result human-rights’ considerations were to win out because it was next in the

equation. But this situation will be examined in detail in the next chapters. Until then,

however, Ceausescu was regarded positively overall, regardless of his other actions.

As noted in the previous chapter, international perceptions of Romania existed on

different levels. Besides its positive maverick image, the world also regarded Romania’s

domestic policies i.e., human-rights’ violations, which could potentially threaten its

relations with the West. At the turn of the decade, Britain had uncovered a Romanian spy

network in Western Europe. In this chapter, the Americans and other Western powers

discovered Delta, a Romanian trading company, located in the Ministry of Foreign Trade,

that sold goods Romania imported from the West to the Soviet Union without then

entering the market directly. Delta sold French wheat, American corn, Chilean copper,

and Israeli oranges to Soviet Union. The British also accused the Romanians at the UN of

being a conduit for buyers of Rhodesian chrome, which was an object of UN trade

sanctions. Romania’s position as a go-between in trade worried Americans whenever

trade talks began to surface. An obvious concern was that Romania would sell Western

technology to the Soviets, especially that which concerned oil drilling. Even though there

was no evidence of this happening, there were rumors that Ceausescu participated in

selling Western technology to the Soviets and to the Middle East. Most important,

however, was that Ceausescu expected to enjoy favorable or normal trade relations with

the U.S. and other Western countries because of his independence from Moscow.

Consequently, the West viewed Romania differently from the rest of Eastern Europe, but

became upset when it discovered that Ceausescu violated Romania’s agreements with the

West. Although aggravating, it was not yet decisive because of points of agreement

between Romania and the West on other matters, much more important to the West, like

the Afghanistan invasion.

Another aspect of Ceausescu’s policies that could have injured his international

reputation was Romania’s human-rights’ record. The London Sunday Times published an

article on Ceausescu’s human-rights’ policies on April 17, 1977 entitled “Romania’s

Oppressed Minorities.” The article claimed cultural genocide occurred in Romania and

stated that its “unmistakable aim is to become a state without any minorities.” The

accusations of discrimination against the Hungarian population remained the same as

those described in the preceding chapter and, therefore, do not merit repetition here.

However, as explained earlier, such violations did not carry enough weight to bring

condemnation of Ceausescu among world leaders and Ceausescu’s “downright

stubbornness” with the Soviets on Afghanistan toppled all other considerations.

U.S.-Romanian Relations

American and Romanian bilateral relations continued to improve to the end of the 1970s.

Diplomatic exchanges at all levels continued and Nicolae Ceausescu visited the U.S. in

1978. A factor that gained more emphasis in American foreign policy during the Carter

administration was human rights and, therefore, it became more visible in American

relations with Romania. The preceding chapters, especially the second, examined

diplomatic exchanges between the heads of states and lower diplomatic exchanges by

Congressmen, officials of the State Department, and businessmen. Visits on Romania’s

behalf were only in Ceausescu’s name, except the cultural exchanges, and therefore, did

not exist on two levels as American exchanges did. The difference in American visits to

Romania during the 1970s was that in the first half of the decade, they were by and large

carried out to discuss and further trade between Romania and the U.S. However, as

human-rights’ concerns became more important in U.S. foreign policy, visits by

Americans reflected this shift in American foreign policy. For example, Representative

Schulze visited Romania in January 1980 and wanted to meet with Kiraly - a former

member of the party’s Central Committee - but the Romanian authorities denied him the

opportunity to do so. Requests by State Department officials to address human-rights’

polices continued. Congress asked Secretary of State, Cyrus R. Vance, to discuss

America’s concern about human rights during his visit to Romania in 1979. Furthermore,

in 1977 President Carter requested State Department officials to personally raise human-

rights concerns’ with high Romanian officials during their visits to Romania. Carter’s

administration formally introduced human-rights’ concerns at the executive level as he

changed the course of American foreign policy and, therefore, what matters were

considered to be in American national interest. Although, President Carter’s foreign

policy regarding human rights will be discussed in the next section, it is enough to

mention here that under President Carter human-rights’ concerns rose to higher status in

America’s relations international relations.

The friendly relations between the U.S. and Romanian, however, were manifested in

early March 1977 when Romania suffered a massive earthquake near Bucuresti. President

Carter sent a message of concern to the Romanians on March 5 and declared that the

United States was ready to extend emergency assistance to ease the suffering of those

injured in the event. Americans acted swiftly in aiding Romania and the Disaster Relief

office immediately dispatched $85,000 in emergency supplies, followed by President

Carter, sending $560,000 worth of emergency disaster relief. Congress soon after signed

a relief bill that provided Romania with $20 million, recognizing that although Romania

and the U.S. had political differences from time to time, these ought not to interfere with

their friendship.

In fact, Ceausescu reached the peak of his glory during Carter’s administration as a result

of two major events. Afghanistan was one of the events and when Congress considered

extending MFN status to Romania in 1980, Representative Lee Hamilton stated that the

extension of MFN status to Romania helped advance “American national interest at a

time when we are in a tense and confrontational phase in our relations with the Soviet

Union as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.” Romanian disapproval of Soviet

actions lengthened Romania’s list of events that highlighted its independence from

Moscow. In the UN, Romania maintained its position on self-determination and did not

support the Soviet position in the debate, and though it did not participate in the UN vote

condemning the Soviet, the Americans understood its abstention as showing approval of

the vote. Romania recognized that its vote was not needed since the overwhelming

majority condemned Soviet movement into Afghanistan, and therefore, it refrained from

voting, so as not to tempt its aggressive neighbor.

The second event that brought much admiration for Ceausescu was his recognized role in

bringing Egyptian and Israeli leaders together. Along with the administration’s praise of

this action, Congress recognized it as well when MFN talks surfaced in 1978, e.g.,

Representative Biaggi of New York. Furthermore, in contrast to the statements on

Romania’s Independence Holiday mentioned in Chapter 2, statements made during the

Carter presidency focused ever more on the Soviet yoke, rather than holding the

Romanian government responsible for its human-rights’ violations. Out of four mentions

of Romania’s National Holiday in 1977, three (Senator Clifford Case, Representative

Derwinki, and Representative Addabbo) emphasized Soviet dominance while the fourth

(Representative Delaney) declared Romania the most oppressive Communist state in

Eastern Europe. During the Ford administration the executive and legislature seemed to

be at odds concerning American relations with Romania. During the Carter

administration, the presidency and Congress shared mutual considerations and both were

overwhelmed with human-rights’ considerations in the beginning but changed their

emphasis after Ceausescu declared himself as a leader seeking world peace in both, the

Middle East talks and Afghanistan.

During Ceausescu’s visit to the U.S. in 1978, Presidents Carter and Ceausescu agreed to a

declaration renewing friendship ties between Romania and the U.S. The Declaration

reaffirmed their commitment to continue developing their relations, reflected in the Joint

Statement on Economic, Industrial and Technical Cooperation, which was based on the

UN Charter and Declaration of the Principles Guiding Relations in Helsinki. Helsinki

principles included the right of each state to self-determination; equality of states-

irrespective of size, level of development, political and social systems; refraining from

the threat or use of force, respect for territorial integrity, and promotion of respect for

human rights and fundamental freedoms. Their joint declaration, signed on April 13

1978, called for continued meetings at the highest level and consultations at other levels,

to place the existing non-discriminatory trade relations on a more stable and long-term

basis, to encourage development of cooperative activities (such as joint ventures), to

cooperate in the settlement of humanitarian issues (such as family reunification), to

promote cultural and scientific exchanges, to make détente irreversible, to insure the

input of all states in settling world problems, to actively contribute to the full

implementation of all provisions of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and

Cooperation in Europe, to promote freedom and independence of all peoples, and to

strengthen the role of the UN.

Other exchanges between Romanian and American officials, although fewer than in the

Ford administration, included Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, visiting Romania to

discuss their bilateral relations, Secretary of Treasury, W. Michael Blumenthal, in

December 1978, Ceausescu’s special emissary, Counselor Vasile Pungan, meeting with

Carter, the Warren Woods Michigan Choir’s tour of Romania sponsored by Friendship

Ambassadors in the summer of 1978, President Carter’s meeting with the Patriarch of the

Romanian Orthodox Church in May 1979, and President Reagan’s meeting with

Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stefan Andrei.

Significance of Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations

Human rights gained a more visible role in American relations with Romania because of

the noted shift of emphasis in American foreign policy. During the presidential campaign

and debates, soon-to-be-elected President Carter blamed the Ford administration for

neglecting human rights in U.S. foreign policy and not enforcing Basket 3 of the Helsinki

agreement. As President Carter came into office, he declared the new administration’s

commitment to human rights in its foreign policy. Secretary of State Vance discussed the

importance of human rights in U.S. foreign policy at the University of Georgia Law

School in April 1977 and defined American human-rights’ foreign policy. It included the

right to be free from a government violating the integrity of the person, the right to vital

needs for survival (such as food, shelter, health care, and education) and the right to enjoy

civil and political liberties. In 1975, Congress formally introduced human rights concerns

to American relations with Romania but they as of yet, did not allow it to supersede other

interests, like trade and support of Romania’s independence of the USSR. Therefore, by

1977, both the executive and legislative branches had come to consider human rights a

vital part of American foreign policy.

As President Carter took office, Congressmen, who had long been addressing the

importance of human rights, expressed satisfaction with the new administration on this

score. And when Romania’s MFN status came up for Congressional review, this focus

led to interest in enforcing the emigration clause, which had already been surfacing in the

first half of the 1970s. However, with President Carter’s recommendation to continued

extension of MFN status to Romania in 1977, many, like Senator Hayakawa, expressed

disappointment. During the debate, Representative Harrington clearly described the

friction between the two considerations that battled against each other in the case of trade

with Romania. “We hope that in the Romanian case we can accomplish two U.S. foreign

policy goals: better relations with Eastern Europe and the furtherance of human rights

and that we can be spared the choice between improved economic relations and the

protection of fundamental freedoms.” The rebuttals, of course, emphasized Romania’s

independence. In 1977, over twenty mentions had been made in Congress that

disapproved of continuing MFN status for Romania, but between 1978 and 1981 only 12

such mentions were made in Congress. Why? Because of the latest confrontational phase

in American relations with USSR with respect to Afghanistan. And Romania’s

independence was of vital importance to the U.S. when America confronted the Soviet

Union over Afghanistan or Czechoslovakia, particularly Afghanistan since the Soviets

claimed that Czechoslovakia was an internal problem and the Americans recognized that

reasoning. Afghanistan, however, demonstrated Soviet imperialism and a will to

conquest.

After the Middle East negotiations and Afghanistan, although human rights remained on

the U.S. agenda they did not possess the importance they had possessed at the beginning

of Carter’s presidency. During Ceausescu’s visit to the U.S. in April 1978, President

Carter welcomed him with cordially and expressed high esteem, but he did not omit to

mention the importance of human rights in their bilateral relations. Ceausescu responded

in the same spirit by stating that Romania and the U.S. were participants and signatories

of Helsinki, working to implement those accords in the economic, cultural, scientific, and

humanitarian fields, as well as in the field of military disengagement. During a dinner

toast, however, Ceausescu responded to Carter’s reference in a toast to the

implementation of the Third Basket, which was of profound importance to the U.S. by

saying, “and that is also the fundamental problem, the core of human rights—the right to

be free, the right and the duty to respect the freedom of others and the duty to work in

such a way in order to enjoy himself or herself and let others enjoy the benefits of

civilization. Maybe on certain aspects of human rights we might have different

philosophical concepts, and there is nothing wrong in that. But we in Romania set out

from the premise that everything we do should serve the well-being of the people, should

help all people live life with more dignity and more freedom.”

He continued by stressing other aspects of human rights that communist philosophy

intended to enhance: the right to work, the right to learn, the right to have access to

culture, with the right to live in freedom, and the right to participate in the management

of all national affairs without discrimination and concluded, as he had stated before that

other Baskets existed in the Helsinki accords, including respect for the sovereignty of

nations and the unconditional equality of nations. Ironically, Ceausescu called for a

democratic international system in which all nations should be equal and free, but during

the entirety of his dictatorship, he omitted to consider that the international system he

praised also had implications about the right and desire of all citizens under any

government, including his.

Ceausescu’s anti-emigration policies and treatment of minorities remained an important

factor in Congressional examination of America’s relations with Romania, especially

when other higher considerations did not take precedence. For that reason, Ceausescu

himself met with Congressmen in both Houses and with personalities of business and

finance during his visit to the United States. Romania’s emigration policies in 1977

especially distressed many in Congress, as the number of exit visas to the United States

issued in 1977 were less than in 1976 by almost half, from 1,054 visas in the first nine

months of the 1976 fiscal year to 715 exit visas in first nine months of the 1977 fiscal

year. Likewise for Jewish emigration, the number of exit visas issued dropped from 2,035

to 1,150. Emigration to Israel dropped significantly from 1973 to 1977.

Emigration to Israel

______________

1973: 3,700

1974: 3,700

1975: 2,140

1976: 2,035

1977: 1,150

Furthermore, in comparing prior-MFN and post-MFN status, Jewish emigration

decreased from 350 to 450 visas per month to 56 per month in 1981, although emigration

to West Germany and the U.S. increased.

The Hungarian minority received more attention in Congress than it had under the Ford

years primarily because of Kiraly. Being a Hungarian in the Central Committee gave his

charges authority, although the issue remained the same. These concerns focused on the

decline of education in the Hungarian language and discrimination in job placement.

Human-rights’ concerns other than emigration and minority treatment surfaced in

Congress as the dissidents pleas leaked to the West. Theses dissidents included writer

Goma, Kiraly, Pacepa, and the gymnast trainers who defected to the U.S. Religious

persecution also gained attention in Congress. According to the London Times, in 1977

over 200 had Romanians publicly supported Goma, who was under house arrest, while

eight other signers of Goma’s letter were sent to work camps. Reverend Richard

Wurbrand, who was a Romanian-Jewish Baptist, testified before Congress in the late

1960s about religious persecution and with Goma’s arrest, the Romanian government

also arrested sixteen Baptists. Ion Ton, a Romanian Baptist minister in Oradea, received

much attention in the West, and Congress noted with pleasure that in June he was freed

from detention. Although human rights became an official part of U.S foreign policy and

such violations were occurring in Romania and were known in the West, U.S. trade

relations continued to exist on a favorable scale due to the increased friction that persisted

between the Soviet Union and the United States towards the later years of the 1970s.

Trade

Trade relations between the U.S. and Romania continued to improve during Carter’s

presidency due to America’s favorable position in their bilateral trade and because of

Romania’s independence from the Russians. Trade relations were generally measured by

the amount of bilateral trade because at most times, the U.S. enjoyed surpluses in the

two-way trade between Romania and the United States. The one time when the figure did

not reflect benefits for America in trading with Romania was in 1978 when Romania

enjoyed a surplus of $27.6 million due to the increase in two-way trade. Though it did not

harm American relations with Romania, it most definitely caused some concern in

Congress since one of the reasons for extending MFN status to Romania was America’s

monetary benefit from these trade relations. As trade was likely to reach $1 billion by

1980 the tables turned in the United States’ favor with it enjoying in 1979 a surplus of

$83 million, almost triple Romania’s surplus in the previous year.

By 1979 trade relations between Romania and the U.S. were once again more secure in

Congress for more than one reason. First, Congress directed its attention at Soviet

aggression in Afghanistan, and simultaneously, Romania’s independence. Furthermore,

trade benefits reversed from 1978 to 1979 to favor of the U.S. and finally, because

Ceausescu’s emigration policies appeared to ease by the end of the 1970s. In the first 11

months of the fiscal year 1979, emigration to the U.S. increased by more than 50% from

1,064 to 1,629 and although Jewish emigration declined, the American Jewish

community endorsed the trade agreements with Romania. Representative Vanik brought

Congressional attention to the drop in Jewish emigration but, dismissed it because of lack

of constituent concern. Representative Vanik’s statement also confirmed the tight

relationship between Congress and its constituents, therefore, explaining human-rights’

concerns in Congress, especially Romania’s treatment of its Hungarian minority.

During the Carter Administration, Congress as well as the administration concluded that

the best method for resolving unresolved problems, such as family reunification, between

the U.S. and Romania was through trade. Congress and the administration both spoke of

initiating long-term trade agreements with Romania and according to Senator Hatfield,

Romania was still the most promising Eastern European communist state from which the

U.S. stood to benefit. During the Carter years and the first year of the Reagan presidency

Romania continued to make big purchases from the West and, therefore, left the U.S.

competing for that trade with other Western powers in Europe. An example was in 1981,

when Romania sought to purchase two 700-megawatt nuclear steam turbine generators

and related spare parts and services for its Cernavoda nuclear plant worth $120,742,500,

and the U.S. had to act fast to extend the credit because the French were ready to finance

the sale for Romania on highly favorable terms. Along with the benefit from selling the

generators, the U.S. had the opportunity to sell additional equipment for another 12 to 14

nuclear power units planned by Romania.

In conclusion, although Congress seemed preoccupied with Ceausescu’s human rights

violations during its review of Romania’s MFN status in 1977, human-rights’ concern

soon gave way to other considerations. Although President Carter had a genuine interest

in human rights all over the world, including Romania, and human rights became a

formal part of American’s declared national interest, the U.S. national interest to defeat

the Soviets in the Cold War was placed higher on the priorities list. Despite all this,

Ceausescu’s international position, especially with respect to the United States, was

secure as long as the Americans and Russians remained enemies, and Ceausescu was

very well aware of this.

Chapter IV

Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations: 1982-1985

Domestic Situation in Romania

The Romanian government entered into unfamiliar and threatening territory in the late

1970s, as the number of dissidents increased in Romania. Ceausescu retaliated with

policies, aimed at deterring dissent letters. In the 1980s he initiated and enforced a law

that required all typewriters to be registered with the Romanian government, to make any

typed letters and documents easily traceable. Dissidents in the late 1970s had represented

the political elite and intellectual class: Pacepa, director of Romanian intelligence agency;

Kiraly, a Hungarian member of Romanian central committee; and Goma, a renowned

writer. These and other intellectuals had called Western attention to Ceausescu’s blatant

violations of the basic human rights that he had vowed to respect in the Final Act of

Helsinki. The Romanian picture during the 1980s, however, witnessed a shift in dissident

representation as more and more dissidents were connected with religious organizations.

The entire eighties decade witnessed a tremendous growth in a religious presence

throughout Romania, mostly in Protestant churches. The Second Baptist Church of

Oradea, a city in the western part of Transylvania, became the largest Baptist church in

Eastern Europe. Its church members grew exponentially and religion became a unifying

link among a sector of Romanians. Although research has not been done yet on the

Protestant religious movement in Romania during this period, I believe it warranted

considerable significance in Romania’s domestic politics and in Romanian relations with

the United States.

The movement, if it may be called that, occurred in the midst of an economic crisis in

Eastern Europe. Due to American policy that reviewed U.S. relations with Eastern

European countries on a one-on-one basis, countries like Romania and Poland received

many credits from the West, resulting from their special friendship to the U.S. and the

West. The credits, however, soon became due, but countries like Poland had very little

hard currency to pay with and harmed its credit-worthy status. Romania came in second

with a debt to the West that amounted to $11.8 billion by the end of 1981. Adding this to

the economic strains after the earthquake in 1977, Romania entered the new decade only

to suffer from the worst economic crisis it had undergone for a long time. Romanian trade

grew with the West, but only for the purpose of increasing Romanian exports. As an

effort to pay off the debt, Ceausescu exported everything out of Romania, leaving

Romanians with excruciating shortages of food and basic goods (and services). Running

hot and cold water simultaneously was very uncommon in Romania during the 1980s.

Heat and electricity were frequently turned off, despite the bitter cold.

An accurate and typical description of Romania abroad was of a frantic population that

was either at work or waiting three to four hours in line for bread, meat, etc. The

economic situation in Romania was like a horrid nightmare. My mother described it as

literally changing overnight. She went to sleep on an ordinary night and woke up the

following morning, only to find that all the stores had been emptied: no milk, no bread,

and no meat. Dr. M. E. Bradford, an English professor at the University of Dallas,

traveled to Romania in the early 80s and described Romania as a country where “the

standing jest there is that Romania is a country where the people pretend to work and the

government pretends to pay them. The government must retire a large debt owed to the

international banks. Hence, a little private trading, the exchange of favors, and skill in the

manipulation of influence are important to the survival of the ordinary citizens.”

Romania was in economic shambles and meanwhile, the Protestant church was growing

immensely. Next to Poland, Romania had the largest church attendance through the

eighties. Ceausescu’s nationalism had won him favor in the 1960s, but it vanished from

public support when Ceausescu replaced it with his personality cult. Romanian

independence was greatly valued in the West when the Russians seemed to threaten the

Romanian borders, but realistic threats vanished with détente. Due to a lack of research

on the subject, I cannot judge whether a causal relationship existed between the rise of

religion and economic hardships in Romania during the eighties, although I may perhaps

pursue this question in the future; but for the purposes of this thesis, it is enough to

recognize that these factors marked the eighties and a correlation most definitely existed.

Protestant churches administered morning services only on Sundays in the 1970s, but

throughout the 1980s most of these churches opened for morning and evening services

and were full to capacity and other people listening through the outdoor speakers

surrounded the buildings. Later in the chapter, the role of religion in Romania will also be

examined as a human-rights’ concern in the United States, but for Romania itself, it is

important to recognize the tremendous growth of the Protestant church in Romania as

disenchanted members of the Romanian Orthodox Church filled the Protestant churches.

U.S.-Soviet Relations

Many historians and political scientists viewed the eighties as a decade in which

communist human-rights’ became more repressive. In fact, I was first attracted to this

subject when I came across the often-seen theory that blamed Ceausescu’s alleged

increase in human-rights’ violations in the eighties for the turbulence in Romania’s

relations with the United States later on in the decade. American foreign policy seemed to

have returned to the Cold-War days and through the first half of the decade American

relations with the Soviet Union could accurately be described as hostile. During a

Question-Answer session, President Reagan described U.S. relations with the Soviet

Union as a realistic one in which “We know that there is an adversary relationship there

that has been brought about by the Soviets policy of expansionism, and we are not so

naïve as to ignore that in any dealings that we have.”

The previous chapter clearly conveyed Soviet ambitions in the late 1970s to expand

communism further beyond its border. When House Representative Jack Kemp of New

York mentioned the Bessarabia issue and introduced another paper by Dr. Nicholas Dima

he emphasized the injustices inflicted upon Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union and

compared the Romanian situation with the Soviet Union after WWII with the on-going

situation in Afghanistan. “The Soviet Union continues its pursuit of world domination

through its selfish commitment to the ‘law of history.’” The Soviets’ overzealous

sentiment of expansionism perhaps caused more damage to themselves than benefit

because it forced the Americans to retaliate. President Carter was much criticized for his

lack of action in response to Soviet aggression and President Reagan led his

administration to counteract Soviet aggression by reintroducing the arms race as part of

U.S. national interest. Economically, the United States was out of the Soviets’ league. An

arms race entailed further economic strains that the Soviet Union had no means to meet.

American relations with the Soviet Union in the 1980s are all too familiar, so there is no

need for a detailed summary of them. It is important to notice, however, the shift in U.S.

foreign policy and therefore, the U.S. national interest.

During Reagan’s first presidency, American foreign policy and national interest

continued to be closely identified with differentiation. This policy in essence maintained

a one-on-one review of U.S. relations with each Eastern European with country, but also

emphasized a “hostile” line against the Soviet Union. Regardless of which of the two

superpowers first initiated adversarial relations, the outcome was a newly brought on

hostility in relations between the Soviet Union and the United States.

In Americans’ minds, the Soviets were the root of all evil and were to be blamed for the

negative behavior of other Warsaw-Pact countries. When a Romanian plot to bomb the

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty Building in Munich was discovered, “terrorism as

an instrument of foreign policy” was discussed as an Eastern European policy, but it was

emphasized as a Soviet policy. The plan had been discovered in 1984 when a Romanian

defector revealed the plan to German authorities.

The Brezhnev Doctrine that affirmed the Soviet right to intervene in communist countries

that had been de-emphasized with Helsinki, reappeared to justify Soviet aggression in the

late 70s and early 80s. In November 1982 the Brezhnev era came to an end with the

dictator’s death however, the Reagan administration remained skeptical of Soviet

intentions regarding the Doctrine, until a new generation stepped into Soviet leadership.

Gorbachev, however, will be discussed in the following chapter since his rule started only

in March 1985. Although the two Soviet regimes after Brezhnev, Yury V. Andropov’s

and Konstantin Chernenko’s respectively, were short they continued adversarial relations

with the U.S. as is evident by the continued aggression in Afghanistan and the 1984

Olympics boycott. Arms reduction negotiations nevertheless continued between the

Soviets and Americans when Vice-President George Bush headed a delegation to Geneva

in 1983, where both sides agreed to resume arms reduction talks; but when all is

considered, the United States adopted and maintained a hard line against the Soviet

Union until Gorbachev set the USSR on its path of perestroika and glasnost and withdrew

Soviet troops from Eastern Europe and Afghanistan

International Perception of Romania

As the international community paid much attention to Ceausescu’s independence, it also

became weary of Romania’s human rights record. Although Romanian participation at

the Summer Olympics in 1984 was appreciated by the Western world and the United

States after the Soviet Union boycotted those Olympics, Nicolae Ceausescu’s internal and

external policies drew negative international attention. Pacepa’s defection to the United

States exposed on the Romanian leader’s external policy of pursuing terrorist attacks on

Romanian dissidents abroad. Romanian plots to attack Romanian dissidents were

discovered in France and in 1982 the Romanian government enlisted Matei Haiducu on a

mission to assassinate writer, Paul Goma, but Haiducu revealed the assignment to French

authorities. Also in the early 1980s, German authorities arrested a Romanian spy, who

was tracking Romanian dissidents in West Germany and Emil Georgescu, a Romanian

editor for RFE, was stabbed 22 times.

Radio Free Europe continued its coverage on the Romanian human-rights’ situation and

expressed its concern regarding Radu Filipescu, a Romanian dissident, imprisoned on a

10-year sentence for “propaganda against the socialist order.” Filipescu, an electronics

engineer, was arrested for having produced and distributed leaflets that denounced

Ceausescu’s personal rule and his mismanagement of the Romanian economy. Foreign

Broadcast Reports also printed an article published in Hamburg, West Germany, which

addressed the case of a certain Dr. Costel Galalae. According to the article, the

International Association for Human Rights in Frankfurt was concerned for the health of

Galalae, who in 1982 was sentenced to 40 years in prison after his family fled to Western

Germany. He was refused medical treatment after “ill-treatment” received in the Poarta

Alba prison in Constanta, Romania; the reports later note that he was finally transferred

to a prison hospital in Bucuresti.

Nevertheless, Nicolae Ceausescu was able to transfer some attention from his human-

rights’ policies to his independence and his role in international affairs. With the rapid

increase in arms expenditure by the U.S. and consequently the Soviet Union, he

preoccupied himself with delegations that condemned the intensified tensions in the

international arena. The Romanian delegation to the UN vigorously emphasized the need

to halt the arms race and nuclear arming in particular, and claimed “the fundamental issue

of our time is to halt the arms race and pass on to the implementation of substantive

disarmament measures, nuclear disarmament in the first place.” Romania’s independence

in this particular international context carried a particular element not present before: its

disapproval not only of Soviet actions, but American steps in carrying on the arms race as

well.

In the international arena, Ceausescu sought independence from both blocs in respect to

the arms race and became more active in the non-aligned bloc. Bucuresti hosted a

meeting of the Group 77 [the coalition of UN-member “Third World” countries that

sought to articulate and promote the collective economic interest of the developing

world] in May 1982, and in 1983 the Romania Foreign Minister, Stefan Andrei,

addressed UN members during a reunion of foreign ministers of the country members to

the Group 77. He conveyed to the UN Romania’s concern regarding the increase of the

arms race and the worsening relations between the Soviet Union and the United States

that “jeopardized the freedom, independence, security and peace of the nations, of the

entire world,” especially the developing countries, which found it difficult to survive the

imposed high interest rates for credits, the expansion of protectionism, the discriminatory

practices in trading and the growing burden of foreign debt of the developing countries

which was worsened because of the tensions between the bipolar powers. The Romanian

delegation also mentioned that Romania welcomed another meeting of the developing

countries in Bucuresti in 1985.

As mentioned earlier, even though Ceausescu’s international reputation was tarnished by

his domestic repression, he remained outspoken on his non-aligned policy, which was

consistent with Romania’s reputation of an independent foreign policy. Although

Ceausescu condemned both super powers, he maintained normal relations with both and

continued to demonstrate his independence from Moscow when the occasion arose.

Romania’s participation at the 1984 Olympics was most welcomed by the West,

especially since it was the only Warsaw-Pact country to ignore the Soviet boycott.

Throughout the period of heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet

Union, and of Romania’s declining reputation with respect to its human-rights record’,

Ceausescu survived with little damage.

U.S.-Romanian Relations

During the Carter administration the two branches (executive and legislative) of

government narrowed the gap in their views on Romania and seemed to have ended the

duel that had existed between Congress and the presidency during the Nixon and Ford

administrations. The Reagan administration did not retreat to the adversarial atmosphere

with Congress on Romania seen during the Nixon and Ford administrations, but it did

reject the zealous sentiment in Congress to emphasize human rights in American relations

with Romania. Rather than encouraging an “all or nothing” policy, the Reagan

administration sustained a “quite diplomacy” policy with respect to human rights and

supported close diplomatic and trade relations with Romania.

Between the two Heads of State did not continue the tradition of exchanging presidential

visits as they had since 1969; instead, Vice-President Bush headed a delegation to

Romania in 1983. This difference however, may not signify a cooling in their bilateral

relations for two reasons: first, the United States was much preoccupied with the growing

tensions with the Soviet Union and second, President Reagan extended to Vice-President

Bush a much greater role in U.S. foreign policy than his predecessors had. During George

Bush’s visit to Romania in 1983 both sides discussed their bilateral relations with respect

to trade, as well as American concern regarding Romania’s human-rights’ record and

Romanian concern regarding the arms race. Both sides expressed their viewpoints: the

significance of human rights in U.S. foreign policy and the significance of disarmament

in Romania’s foreign policy. In letters exchanged in 1984 between Presidents Reagan and

Ceausescu, the latter expressed his concern regarding the “grave tension existing on the

international scene.” Ceausescu disclosed his views by declaring “priority should be

given to the halting of both the deployed intermediate range American missiles in West

European countries and to the countermeasures taken by the Soviet Union.” Even though

Ceausescu was ready to blame the U.S. for reinitiating the arms race and the Soviet

Union only for its reaction, his relations with Washington, however, did not suffer,

because both ends of his statement were consistent with his independent foreign policy.

Furthermore, Washington valued more Romanian disapproval of the Soviet Union than

its disapproval of the United States. Romania had no obligation to agree with the U.S. on

its policies, whereas the Soviets believed that Romania had a duty to follow and support

Moscow’s foreign policy line; and when the Romanians did not, it reflected defiance

towards Moscow. President Reagan’s reply expressed an open-discussion atmosphere in

U.S.-Romanian relations, where both sides despite differences in their opinions expressed

their views in a cordial atmosphere. I appreciate your advice but frankly, I do not believe that a halt to U.S. deployments and

Soviet “countermeasures” is a balanced or viable approach. U.S. intermediate-range

missiles are being deployed to offset the enormous -- and growing – force of Soviet SS-

20 missiles.

In the midst of the Soviet and U.S. dispute, Ceausescu declared his views on the situation

and what he saw as a solution to it; and even though he placed more blame on

Washington than on Moscow, he demonstrated his continued independence from

Moscow and Romania’s continuing friendly relations with the United States. The Soviet

Union, as noted, boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and Romania

was the only Warsaw Pact country represented at the Olympics. Most Americans

appreciated Romania’s choice in participating in the Olympics and interpreted the act as a

demonstration of Romania’s bold independence from Moscow. Few Americans begged

to differ, like the American Ambassador to Romania from 1981 to 1984, David

Funderburk, who claimed Romania’s presence was a negotiated act and agreed upon in a

secret meeting between the Romanians and the Soviets. Funderburk’s claim, however,

had no impact on mainstream American views on Romania’s participation at the

Olympics since time and time again, State officials and members of Congress praised

Romania’s participation as an act of its independence.

Interesting enough, presidential exchanges occurred at the highest level during the Carter

presidency, which ardently placed human-rights’ concerns on the U.S. agenda, but they

did not exist during the Reagan presidency. A presidency that adopted a hard-line policy

against the Soviet Union and placed more emphasis on differentiation in its policies

towards the Eastern European countries, while leaving human-rights’ concerns to the

“quite diplomacy” sphere. Congressional reaction to this new executive policy was to

increase its on-going attention to Ceausescu’s human-rights’ violations but to emphasize

religious oppression. Congress also continued its visits to Romania to “test the waters” as

it were, but unlike the visits in late 1960s and 1970s, the purpose of these trips was

chiefly to examine Romania’s human-rights’ policies and how they might influence

bilateral trade relations.

Although exchanges on an economic and cultural basis existed (like the economic

delegation in 1983, headed by members of the joint economic commission and of the

Romanian-U.S. Economic council – not to speak of the Delaware County Community

College Cabrini Chorus- which gave a series of concerts as they toured Romania ) most

delegations focused on human-rights’ policies. An American delegation visited the Soviet

Union, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania in 1983 to discern the human-rights’ situation

in those countries. Representative Bonker was one of the delegates and concluded that

Romania “is undeniably the most repressive of the Eastern European countries and

Nicolae Ceausescu is a virtual dictator.” Just before the delegation met with Ceausescu,

the Under-Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, also met with him but both

meetings had disappointing results as Ceausescu angrily declared that the United States

had no right to meddle in Romanian’s internal affairs. Also, Kentucky Representative

Tom Riner and Kentucky Senator Gene Huff met with Romanian government officials

during their visit to Romania in 1984 to discuss and express their concerns regarding

religious oppression in Romania, specifically, the bulldozing of churches, the

“mysterious deaths” of various Christian leaders and the prison sentences to other

religious leaders. The following year Congressman Tony Hall, Frank Wolf, and

Christopher Smith visited Romania to “examine governmental practices at first hand.”

Upon their return to the United States, they wrote a letter to the Romanian Minister of

Foreign Affairs, Stefan Andrei, that conveyed their concerns regarding religious

oppression in Romania and increasing U.S. concern on the matter.

Unlike previous years, attention was growing rapidly to Romania’s human-rights’

violations, especially religious oppression. Consistent with President Reagan’s quiet

diplomacy policy, State Department officials and members of Congress extended visits to

Romania to witness the situation and express their concerns to Romanian officials.

Diplomatic exchanges may have not increased during the 1980s, but their purpose

changed from predominately trade concerns to human-rights’ concerns.

Significance of Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations

The contents of the chapter thus far have already disclosed the amplification of human-

rights’ concerns in U.S. relations with Romania. The intriguing change that occurred

during President Reagan’s first presidential term was the enormous increase in attention

given to Romania’s human-rights’ record, but it was not to random human-rights’

violations. Attention was particularly focused on religious persecution. The upsurge of

religion, especially Protestant, in Romania was discussed above in the Domestic Situation

in Romanian section and therefore, does not need to be repeated here.

Throughout the 1960s to 1980s, human-rights’ concerns about Romania were expressed

in the United States, even though they may not have had the power to alter or influence

U.S. foreign policy, especially prior to the treaty-based relations based on Romania’s

MFN status. The paper thus far has presented the general role that human-rights’

concerns had in U.S. foreign policy, in both the administration and Congress.

Congressional responsibility to its constituents accurately explains its role in this

phenomenon. However, the central question of the thesis is why human-rights’ concerns

grew in importance during the Reagan presidency, which was a period of heightened

tensions with the Soviet Union, and also an administration that practiced real politicks

that had little interest in human rights. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Ceausescu

skillfully had played on American disputes with the Soviet Union in Romania’s favor:

Czechoslovakia, the Soviet refusal to negotiate trade agreements based on its emigration

policies, and Afghanistan. Furthermore, human-rights’ concerns grew, though in

Congress, even more rapidly than they had during the Carter administration, an

administration that endorsed public attention to human-rights’ policies and their role in

U.S. foreign policy.

The introduction of the paper mentioned the predominant academic theory that human-

rights’ concerns grew in the United States in the 1980s because human-rights’ violations

were increasing in Romania during the same period. The evidence presented by the

Congressional Record in its presentation of discussions about American-Romanian

bilateral treaty-based relations demonstrates that human-rights’ violations existed at a

consistent level throughout Ceausescu’s dictatorship, or at least from the early 1970s, and

furthermore, being printed in the Congressional Record, they clearly were violations that

the United States was fully aware of. Consequently, the predominant theory that human-

rights’ violations increased dramatically in the 1980s does not stand in the face of the

provided evidence. Furthermore, U.S. foreign policy and national interest had been even

more defined by anti-Sovietism, and therefore, pro-independence for Romania, which

Romania consistently benefited from since Ceausescu came to power. Some may argue

that during the Reagan administration Romanian’s independence during the Soviet-

American dispute may not have displayed its “maverick” elements as boldly as during

previous disputes, as suggested by the letters exchanged between Reagan and Ceausescu.

However, I do not believe this to be the case, because Ceausescu had directly advised the

Americans to withdraw from Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and yet,

Romanian-American relations had strengthened. Like Vietnam, Romania’s suggestion

that the U.S. withdraw its deployed missiles from Western Europe only manifested

Romania’s insistence in maintaining its own policies regardless of pressures from either

superpower. Therefore, what is the missing link between the 1970s and the early 1980s

and which will continue in the next chapter? The Religious Movement in Romania.

Throughout the rest of the thesis I hope to prove that human rights can be a causal factor

in U.S. foreign policy not as a general category, but rather in the form of a specific

human-rights’ concern: religious oppression.

Cold War + Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe -- > Romanian independent foreign

policy -- > U.S.-Romanian diplomatic exchanges -- > increase in U.S.-Romanian trade --

> Trade Agreement, 1975 + open emigration sub clause -- > human rights introduction in

bilateral relations -- > U.S.-Soviet aggression 1979-1985/6 -- > 1983 Romanian education

tax + MFN status threatened by Reagan administration -- > Protestant religious

movement in Romania + MFN status threatened by Reagan administration in 1985

Human-rights’ concerns during the Romanian treaty-based relations, defined by its MFN

status, increased and decreased in Congress, but never had endangered Romania’s MFN

status as it would did in the 1980s. Ceausescu’s imposed education tax on emigrants of

the approximate cost of their higher education (reaching $30,000 for doctors) per

individual in foreign currency indeed endangered Romania’s MFN status in 1983 when

President Reagan had warned that he would discontinue Romania’s MFN status if

Ceausescu did not repeal the law. Although Ceausescu did not remove the law from the

books, it was discontinued and, therefore, MFN status was continued in 1983. By 1985

the American press was bombarding the American public with stories on religious

persecution in Romania. For example, buses in Washington, DC displayed huge ads,

“Rumania cries for religious freedom. They need your help.” Towards the end of 1985

the State Department declared that it believed the Romanian government was in danger

of losing MFN status. The New York Times published an article on December 3, 1985,

stating “U.S. says Romanians may lose trade benefits over rights issue,” because they

continued to ignore American concerns, which were dominated by religious-rights’

concerns.

The emigration law may at first glance refute my theory that religious oppression can be

a causal factor in U.S. foreign policy that other human-rights’ concerns could not, but I

do not believe this to be the case. First of all, because emigration was a direct component

in U.S.-Romanian relations through the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and because it was

part of a binding treaty, I am inclined to believe its significance as a subject was less

important than religious persecution was: a human-rights’ element that was never a direct

component of a U.S. treaty with Romania. Furthermore, Representative Vanik himself

declared the purpose of the emigration clause to have been aimed at the Soviet Union.

And although, religious oppression was indeed a component of the Helsinki accord, so

were emigration and minority policies. Furthermore, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was

a much more viable treaty that Helsinki, which was simply an agreement on good faith.

On the contrary, trade relations between the U.S. and Romania continued despite

Ceausescu’s attempts at manipulating laws to hinder the free flow of emigration out of

Romania. Ambassador Funderburk acknowledged before Congress Ceausescu’s tactic of

inundating the American embassy with immigration applications, only to find out they

did not meet America’s requirements for permission to immigrate. Jewish emigration

decreased after the MFN status was granted to Romania and, yet, bilateral MFN treaty-

based relations continued.

Furthermore, I am inclined to argue that religious persecution bears significant influence

on American foreign policy because in the 1970s there was an upsurge in human-rights’

concerns in Congress with respect to the Hungarian minority living in Transylvania; but

it never gained the momentum that religious rights gained in the 1980s. Even though,

ample attention was given to the minority issue, Romania’s MFN status was never as

endangered, as it was when the Reagan administration asserted its belief that Romania

was in danger of losing its MFN status in 1985, which came at a time that American

awareness of Romania’s religious persecution reached its peak. Out of the forty explicit

human-rights’ concerns expressed in the Congressional Record between 1982 and 1985

[emigration concerns excluded because the two issues often overlapped], thirteen focused

on ethnic minority rights, whereas twenty-seven, just over twice as many, concerns

emphasized religious persecution in Romania. Furthermore, emigration concerns began

to overlap with religious ones. In the history of U.S.-Romanian relations during

Ceausescu’s regime, emigration concerns never overlapped with the Hungarian minority,

but emigration concerns did overlap with religious dissidents when American attention

became directed on Romania’s religion policies. The Senate resolution 119 expressed

congressional distress with respect to religious persecution in Romania and Romania’s

denial of the “fundamental right to emigrate to those individuals desiring to escape

religious persecution.”

Various factors explain why religious persecution attracted greater attention than

Hungarian minority rights did. First, the Hungarian minority in Romania was a sensitive

internal issue because Transylvania was a disputed area and a contested region

historically between Hungary and Romania. The Hungarian government, taking

advantage of the vulnerable situation in Romania, could have reasonably instigated

Hungarian complaints. Furthermore, numerous articles and papers were introduced in

Congress that clearly focused on minority rights as part of Hungarian propaganda against

Romania’s possession on Transylvania. An article by John Lukacs entitled “New

Republic” was introduced in Congress in 1982 that ignored any real minority-rights’

concerns and instead dismissed any Romanian right to Transylvania and declared that

Romania’s claims to a history back to the Dacians and Trajan were fables. Most

Americans believe that America’s meddling in that sort of dispute would have been ill-

advised and unwise, especially since Hungary was strongly supporting Soviet policies.

Religious persecution, however, was an issue usually able to stir-up Americans.

Trade

The previous section already addressed various strains in U.S.-Romanian relations with

respect to their bilateral trade relations. However, another objection addressed in

Congress with respect to the extension of MFN status for Romania was the shift in the

trade surplus. The trade surplus was a concern noted in the last chapter as well when

Romania benefited from a surplus of $27.6 million in 1978, however, this was only

temporary and trade once again was in America’s favor in 1980 by $83 million. By the

1980s Romania became America’s largest trading partner in Eastern Europe, exceeding

trade of over $1 billion. However, due to the numerous credits and loans that Romania

owed during the 1980s, Romania was declared a non-creditworthy country by the

American government and it refused in 1982 to grant Romania $65 million in commodity

credits.

When deciding whether to grant Romania the additional credits American policy reached

a stalemate, for two competing policies were at stake. The first was to encourage Eastern

European countries to develop independence from the Soviet Union and the second was

whether the U.S. should lend money on a businesslike basis only if confidant that it

would be repaid. The United States decided to refuse further credits to Romania after the

Romanian government decided in March 1982 to halt its payments to Western creditors

and asked for an extended rescheduling of its already overdue debt. Rescheduling talks

were set up and even though further credits were refused, trade relations continued and

even increased between Romania and the United States.

By 1984 two-way trade between the United States and Romania reached an all time high

of $1.2 billion. Most significantly was the fact that in that trade, Romania enjoyed $974

million or 81% in surplus. Although this was a large surplus, I do not believe it was a

causal factor in American threats for discontinuing MFN status for Romania because, as

various other State officials stated, the surplus was expected due to the economic crisis in

Easter Europe and the American government remained cautious of setting strict economic

priorities in trade relations with Romania because it would “eventually rob the

differentiation policy of any political meaning.” Furthermore, this surplus allowed

Romania to repay part of its debt to the West.

Once again in 1985, the paper reaches a point where the U.S. threatened Romania’s MFN

status; however motives were not because of trade surplus or emigration. After all, at the

end of 1985 more than 154,000 Romanians had emigrated to the United States, Israel,

and Germany since 1975, of whom 17,000 emigrated in 1985. The emigration level in

1985 was six times higher than any pre-MFN level. Consequently, I believe that we must

look at religious oppression as an issue that could motivate America’s policy toward

Romania and, as a result, their trade relations. We shall follow up our examination of this

issue in the next chapter.

Chapter V

Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations: 1986-1989

Domestic Situation in Romania

The Romanian domestic situation worsened in economic terms as well as politically

during the last years of Ceausescu’s dictatorship. Shortages were a norm, and Romanians

became more acquainted with the “second economy” (or black market), a necessary

element for their survival. Political discontent surfaced even two years or so before the

revolution in 1989, when workers in Brasov (a city south of Bucuresti) protested in the

streets as they shouted “Down with the dictator!” On November 15, 1987 the

demonstrators reportedly carried banners and instigated other protests in Timisoara (a

city in western Romania where the protests in 1989 first started) and in Bucuresti where

demonstrators set a fire at Lenin’s statute. The demonstrations were extremely

significant, in Romania especially, because of the government’s excessively tight control

of the population. Whenever demonstrations occurred before December 1989 in Romania

they were very speedily [and quietly] suppressed.

Ceausescu’ s obsession with his personality cult drove him to extreme repression with

measures taken even against Romanian dissidents in the West. The last chapter cited

examples of assassination attempts on Romanian activists in France, Germany, and the

United States. An article was recently published in a religious magazine by a prominent

Romanian pastor attacking the Romanian Baptist Association in the United States. The

article claimed Ceausescu’s hand was involved in the Association’s affairs to the extent

that Baptist citizens in Romania were granted permission to emigrate to the United States

as long that they promised not to speak negatively about the Romanian government. The

author claimed that when his brother had applied for permission to emigrate, authorities

informed him that his application would be accepted on the condition that he become the

president of the youth section of the Romanian Baptist Association in the United States.

When he refused, someone else came in his place and became the president of the youth

group.

The Romanian government under Nicolae Ceausescu, however, finally fell after twenty-

nine years of dictatorial rule, and at the end restricted Romanians’ basic rights as much as

at the beginning, or at least after his visit to Beijing in 1971. After it became evident that

the Ceausescu government would not permit Gorbachev’s glasnost; after the Berlin Wall

had tumbled; after Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution; after the “round table talks” in

Poland and Hungary; and after the bloodless overthrow of the Bulgarian Communist

Party; only then were Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu seized and executed on December 25,

1989. Following the bloodiest revolution in 1989 in Eastern Europe, both were charged

with endless heinous crimes against the Romanian population.

U.S.-Soviet Relations

Cold-War politics virtually came to an end during Reagan’s second presidential term and

officially so under Bush with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The reestablished

dialogue between the two countries owed much to Gorbachev’s new political approach,

which was a novelty to Eastern European communism. I do not believe a detailed

discussion of developments under Gorbachev is needed because many studies cover this

period, so I will limit myself to mentioning those events that reflected on Romania’s

place as a maverick.

Gorbachev headed the Soviet Communist Party as of March 1985 and launched

perestroika, an economic and political restructuring plan. The intense arms race under

Gorbachev’s predecessors had devastatingly crippled the Soviet economy; Gorbachev’s

new initiations were to counteract the effects of the arms race. His vision was to bring the

Soviet economy to a competing level in the world market with the United States, Japan,

and Germany and, in the process, convince the world that the Soviet Union was not a

threat. The Soviet Union consequently retracted from its aggressive strategies that had

been dominant in the late 1970s and early 80s. As early as 1985, Gorbachev began to

disclose his “new thinking” when he declared that no nation’s security could be achieved

at the expense of another, in essence rejecting the Brezhnev Doctrine. Although the

Americans were cautious at first at the Soviet rhetoric, Gorbachev gained America’s trust

in 1987 when he agreed to an American “zero-option” proposal (later known as the

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty) that eliminated an entire class of nuclear

weapons and for the first time allowed extensive on-site inspections inside the Soviet

bloc. One year later in December 1988, Gorbachev’s most celebrated decision occurred

as he announced the withdrawal of 10,000 tanks from Eastern Europe and a unilateral

reduction in the Soviet army’s forces of half a million soldiers.

Romania’s recent international policies by deviating from Moscow, like its participation

in the 1984 Olympics, seemed unimportant as friendship developed between the Soviet

Union and the United States. To rectify the bad feeling arising from the Olympic boycotts

in 1980 and 1984, the two powers initiated the Goodwill Games in 1986, which marked a

new path in the international relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Romania’s 1984 actions suddenly became irrelevant, but more so, it lost out on other

considerations which tainted Ceausescu’s reputation internationally. As glasnost or

openness granted relative freedom of speech and expression in the Soviet Union,

Romania’s repressive government policies were discussed in Soviet press, as was, for

example, a letter written to Ceausescu by six veterans of the Romanian Communist Party

protesting the regime’s totalitarian rule and violations of human rights. The letter though

not printed in the Romanian press instead appearing in a Soviet Communist Party

newspaper and caused a stir in Romania. Ceausescu’s place as a maverick within the

Cold-War context not only became irrelevant, but also undesired as the Soviets were by

then encouraging Romania to ease up on its political control and cease its human-rights’

violations.

International Perception of Romania

The last favorable movement for Romania internationally was in 1984 when it

disregarded Moscow’s boycott of the summer Olympics in Los Angeles. During the latter

half of the decade Ceausescu lost more and more international prestige, due to his

resistance to the democratic advances in the Soviet Union and in the rest of Eastern

Europe. Countries like Britain (which has had a history of good relations with Romania),

Switzerland, Canada, and the Netherlands expressed harsh criticism toward Ceausescu’s

human-rights’ violations during the Vienna meeting on the Helsinki accords in 1987.

Furthermore, after the meetings, the Romanian government welcomed Yassar Arafat,

head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on August 11, 1987. A newspaper headline

over a picture of the two leaders read “Comrade Ceausescu meets Comrade Yassar

Arafat. A Dictator Smiles at a Laughing Terrorist.” Ceausescu’s open relations with

Israel had been one of the main features of his maverick reputation throughout the world.

This reputation, however, suffered from his open dealings with the PLO. During a House

debate on a resolution to suspend MFN status for Romania for six months Representative

Wolf ended his remarks with: “Lastly, I want to say something: They, the Romanian

Government, provided the passports to the PLO terrorist groups that they used in the

1985 Achille Lauro high jacking. The passports came from Romania.”

Mihai Pacepa, the highest defecting officer from the Soviet bloc, published his book, Red

Horizons, in 1987. His testimonies, even before its publication, however, provided the

U.S. and the world much insight into Ceausescu’s policies and also challenged the

world’s view that Nicolae Ceausescu was independent of Moscow. Although most

individuals in the administration and Congress believed Romania independent of

Moscow, during Congressional debates the “myth of Ceausescu’s independence” was

much discussed, since the main consideration of Romania’s MFN status was whether to

punish it for its violations of human rights by suspending its MFN status or whether to

reward it for its history of independence from Moscow. Representative Crane of Illinois

urged Congress to remove Romania’s MFN status because of its religious oppression and

made reference to the only conceivable objection to his request, “Some here in Congress

still seem to cling to the naïve belief that by so doing [keeping MFN] we can wean

Romania away from the Soviet Union.”

Internationally, Romania was losing its method for international success - its role as a

maverick. Ceausescu’s reputation was faltering even in 1985. But, in the second half of

the 1980s, as Gorbachev transformed the Soviet Union’s reputation around the globe,

Ceausescu refusal to be in step with the new Eastern European consensus made him

Eastern Europe’s tyrant.

U.S.-Romanian Relations & Significance of Human Rights in U.S.-Romanian Relations

The sections on U.S.-Romanian relations and the Significance of Human Rights in U.S.-

Romanian relations are combined in this chapter because diplomatic exchanges – a

previous measuring factor in their relations - during this period were very limited. Pacepa

claimed that the Bucuresti government was seeking a presidential visit between

Presidents Reagan and Ceausescu, but the visit never took place. According to David

Funderburk, NSC and Defense officials recommended against such a visit but he omitted

a citation and Roger Kirk and Mircea Raceanu also attested in their book, Romania

Versus the United States, the likelihood that America would accept such a visit.

Nevertheless, their hypothesis is speculative since most executive documents from

Reagan’s presidency are still classified. In fact, only twenty-five pages on U.S.-

Romanian relations have been declassified from the Reagan Presidential Library.

The last reference to an official American visit to Romania in the Congressional Record

after the Secretary of State’s visit in December 1985, in which he expressed American

concerns about Romania’s human-rights’ policies and his hope to further increase trade

between the U.S. and Romania, was Senator Paul Simon’s meeting with Romanian

Parliamentary officials in early 1986 where both sides expressed “a keen interest” in

preserving bilateral relations, but the Senator also specifically addressed Dorel

Catarama’s case. Mounting attention was given in Congress to Romania’s religious

persecutions as we saw in the last chapter.

In 1986 Representative Wolf introduced a resolution to suspend Romania’s MFN

status for that reason for six months, but was defeated by a narrow margin of 216 for

MFN to 190 nays. President Reagan questioned Romania’s MFN status in 1982 and

1985, the first time owing to an education tax imposed on emigrants and the second

time owing to Romania’s refusal to comply with “American concessions.” The second

statement is vague and until the relevant documents are declassified, I cannot judge

what the concessions were exactly, but American congressional concerns clearly

focused on Romania’s religious persecutions. Since MFN status becomes irrelevant

after 1987 because once MFN status was lost, even if only for six months, returning it

to Romania seemed highly unlikely, I read the Congressional Record volumes only up

to that year and found that twenty-nine references were made in 1986 and 1987 to the

Romanian government’s religious persecutions, while only eleven referred to minority

discrimination. Furthermore, the “myth” of Romania’s independence began to

repeatedly surface as some members of Congress recognized that a “myth” as

opposed to a “reality” of Ceausescu’s independence was what stood most in the way

of removing Romania’s MFN status. Nevertheless, regardless of attention given to

Ceausescu’s potential selling of Western technology to the Soviet Union and claims

rejecting his independence of the Soviet Union, the mainstream American consensus

continued to be that Ceausescu pursued an independent policy. Whether it was a myth

or reality did not matter as long as the administration and the majority of Congress

believed it to be true, but the issue of Romania's independence ceased to matter with

Gorbachev's policies.

Cold War + Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe -- > Romanian independent foreign policy -- > U.S.-

Romanian diplomatic exchanges -- > increase in U.S.-Romanian trade -- > Trade Agreement, 1975 +

open emigration sub clause -- > human rights introduction in bilateral relations -- > U.S.-Soviet

aggression 1979-1985/6 -- > 1983 Romanian education tax + MFN status threatened by Reagan

administration -- > Protestant religious movement in Romania + MFN status threatened by Reagan

administration in 1985 -- > Gorbachev -- > Romania’s MFN status suspended for 6 months in June

1987 -- > Ceausescu renounced MFN status in Feb. 1988

Human rights’ concerns in the late 1980s became increasingly important in

Congressional debates on Romania’s MFN status. The debates centered on whether

removing MFN status would be detrimental to the citizens of Romania or whether

continuing MFN status was an endorsement of Romania’s human-rights’ violations;

in any case, MFN was obviously not improving the internal situation in Romania.

From a small rhetorical place in discussions by the Administrations and Congress

throughout the 1970s and early 80s, the human-rights' issue came to have an ever

increasing role in Congress and I believe eventually in the administration as well after

1985, for whether or not one supported MFN for Romania, Romania’s human-rights’

record had to be faced by both sides. The unsuccessful but favorable narrow vote in

1986 was a major step toward Romania’s loss of this status, because it made it clear

that human-rights had become significant enough to threaten Romania’s treaty

relations with the United States. One must remember, however, that human-rights’

concerns rose to this intense level because of Romania’s religious oppressions. Claims

that the Ceausescu government had confiscated 20,000 Bibles sent to Romania and

turned them into toilet paper, that he was imprisoning people for their religious

beliefs, that he bulldozed religious buildings, and that the government was interfering

in churches through its control of pastor licenses were being increasingly discussed.

Thus, religious-oppression concerns not surprisingly seriously threatened these treaty-

based relations, but did not terminate them until 1987. By then Romania’s being a

maverick had ceased to be important and its religious oppression had become more

widely known and embarrassing

Thus, Congress’ human-rights’ concerns finally ended America’s treaty-based

relations with Romania in 1987, at that time the House of Representatives passed an

amendment to suspend Romania’s MFN status for six months by a vote of 232 to 183

on April 30. Although President Reagan recommended extending Romania’s MFN

status on June 3, 1987, the Senate backed the House of Representatives’ vote to

suspend Romania’s MFN status for six months by an overwhelming vote of 56 to 28

on June 28, 1987. And so, the United States’ treaty-based relations with Romania

came to an end in the summer of 1987 and the last dot was placed in their relations

under the Ceausescu era in February 1988 when Romania renounced any extension of

MFN status after the six month period because of Ceausescu’s unalterable opinion

that American concerns over his human-rights’ practices was interfering in Romania’s

internal affairs.

Trade

Trade from 1986 to the end of America’s relations with Romania continued

Romania’s trade surplus, that also existed in the early 1980s. America’s trade deficit

with Romania in 1984 had reached $588 million with a ration of 3.4:1, which was

worse than America’s deficit with Japan, which was at the ratio of 3:1. This was

opposite of the 1970s when the United States enjoyed a consistent surplus in its trade

with Romania. Even so this trade was supported by the administration and was even

favored by some in Congress.

Representative Stratton from New York, for example, spoke against suspending

Romania’s MFN status in1987 because GE had received orders for two or three

nuclear generators. “This kind of business [is] vitally needed in a city that has layoffs

in the turbine section because of ‘no work’ for over 5,000 GE employees. Let us

provide the unemployed Americans the kind of jobs that Romania has provided in

many parts of America, in New York, as well as Virginia.” Another pro-trade

statement came from Representative Boucher of Virginia, who opposed the

suspension because it would threaten a joint coal-mining venture between the Island

Creek Coal Co. and the Romanian government. According to Representative Boucher,

“If this amendment is adopted, I fear the loss of a major contract through which my

constituents derive more than $25 million in trade annually with Romania.”

Nevertheless, despite certain Representatives who were under constituent pressures

for continued trade relations with Romania, trade relations did end in June 1987 since

the removal of Romania’s MFN imposed highly unfavorable tariffs for Romania.

Again, I do not believe the trade deficit was a major factor in terminating bilateral

trade relations because, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, through this extensive

trade surplus Romania was paying back Western credits, supporting an American

interest. By 1986 Romania’s foreign debt had fallen to about $4 billion from the

approximately $11 billion it owed. In an interview in Beijing on April 30, 1986

Ceausescu had stated that Romania would clear up its foreign debts in the next five

years, which seemed a believable statement since Romania had succeeded already in

repaying half in the previous five years. Furthermore, the deficit would have

decreased substantially by President Reagan’s decision in January 1987 to terminate

trade advantages accorded to Romania under the General System of Preferences. That

system was designed to help developing countries remain competitive in the

American market; the estimated reductions in Romanian exports to the United States

were estimated at a $150 to $200 million. Nevertheless, at a time when Romania no

longer served America’s national interest and religious-oppression concerns gained

momentum in Congress and the administration, trade relations between the United

States of America and the Socialist Republic of Romania based on MFN status finally

came to an end in 1987, after twelve years.

Conclusion

The central purpose of this thesis was to determine why U.S.-Romanian relations, which

had been friendly since 1968, significantly worsened from 1985, leading to the end of

their treaty-based relations in 1987. While pursuing an answer to this question the thesis

also examined certain hypotheses regarding American foreign policy, in particular to

what degree was human rights a driving force in U.S. foreign policy and if it was, then

under what circumstances. If human-rights policy' was not a driving force, then why was

it not? Within the Romanian context the primary question was to what degree did human

rights play a role in America’s deteriorating relations in the 1980s with Romania under

Ceausescu.

Before the United States and Romania established treaty-based relations in August 1975,

founded on MFN status, Ceausescu attracted Western attention to Romania, a relatively

unimportant country that boasted about its Latin roots, was part of the Soviet bloc and

bordered on the Soviet Union. Ceausescu’s refusal to invade Czechoslovakia with the

other Warsaw-Pact troops in1968 and his condemnation of the invasion was not triggered

by an inclination to move closer to the West, even though that was indeed a consequence,

which was welcomed by both sides. His refusal to invade Czechoslovakia was motivated

by his belief in the right to self-determination of each sovereign nation. Therefore,

although Romania was a communist country within the Soviet camp, this policy

harmonized with American policy, a policy that encouraged members of the Eastern bloc,

the buffer zone for the Soviet Union, to seek maximum independence from Moscow.

Within this context U.S.-Romanian relations developed.

In order to answer the central question of the thesis: why U.S.-Romanian relations

dramatically worsened during the second half of the 1980s and, testing the dominant

claim that human-rights’ violations increased in Romania during this period, I read all the

entries on Romania in the Congressional Record from 1972 to 1987 and found that

human-rights’ violations were as present in Romania when Congress first granted MFN

status to Romania in 1975 as when this status was rescinded in 1987, or at least human-

rights’ violations as perceived by Congress. Thus, human-rights’ violations were a

consistent problem in Romania, although Congressional policies towards Romania were

not. Starting with the second chapter, I no longer examined U.S.-Romanian relations only

at the executive level because Romania receiving MFN treatment directly introduced

Congress in to U.S.-Romanian relations at a significant level. Congressional policies

towards Romania, however, turned against Romania only in 1986 when it came very

close to denying MFN status for Romania; then in June 1987 it suspended Romania’s

MFN status for six months. During these two years two significant changes had taken

place in Romania. The first was a rising Protestant religious movement and the second

was Romania’s position as a maverick, a consistent position that until this period was

directly connected with American national interest, but which lost its importance with

Gorbachev’s reforms leading to improved U.S.-Soviet relations.

The first difference did lie within the human-rights’ context. Although numbers of

human-rights’ violations seemed relatively consistent throughout Ceausescu’s

dictatorship, the types of human-rights’ violations did change. When Congress first

approved MFN status for Romania in 1975 its major human-rights’ concern was

Romania’s denying its people the right to emigrate; in fact this right was made a direct

sub clause in their trade agreement [Jackson-Vanik], a clause very similar to one inserted

in the U.S. draft trade agreement with the Soviet Union, which led the USSR to back out

of the agreement. Nevertheless, the emigration clause rapidly became a channel for other

Romanian human-rights’ violations to become a concern of Congress, specifically

Romania’s treatment of national minorities, mainly the Hungarians. In the late 1970s

another new type of human-rights’ violation in Romania emerged, namely its treatment

of political dissidents. The violations in this matter contradicted basic rights, for the

Romanian government indulged in wide spread wire-tapping and censoring mail. The

government did not tolerate any opposition to the party line. Thus it also prohibited

citizens from housing any foreigners and caused wide spread fears by the constant

presence of the securitate. While previous violations continued, a new issue leading to

further repression emerged in the 1980s. This was the Romanian government’s repression

of the newly emerged evangelical Protestant movement. As a result in the 1980s

Congressional human-rights’ concerns came to focus on religious oppression and in 1985

President Reagan expressed doubt about renewing Romania’s MFN status for 1986. After

which, Congress continued to show more and more concerns regarding religious

repression in Romania. My findings demonstrate that human rights in general did not

necessarily contribute to the U.S. rescinding Romania’s MFN status but, demonstrated

that a certain type of human rights, specifically freedom of religion, possessed the

potential to motivate an American foreign-policy decision.

The second change that occurred in the late 1960s was that Romania's maverick role,

which had instigated America’s interest in friendly relations with Romania, declined in

importance. After Pacepa defected to the United States, the West became more aware that

Ceausescu’s had been dealing extensively with Moscow and that Romania was involved

transferring Western technology to the Soviet Union. Next, Ceausescu’s international

position was undercut further, and most of all, when Gorbachev initiated new policies

towards the bloc and the United States. Ceausescu’s devotion to self-determination was

no longer important to U.S. policy, for Gorbachev allowed independence to the whole

bloc. So Romania was no longer an exception and its repression of its subjects, among

the worst in the bloc, became less acceptable. So Romania’s religious oppression alone

did not officially change U.S. foreign policy in 1987; for Ceausescu’s resistance to the

then occurring changes in Eastern Europe also had a role in removing Romania’s MFN

status was when it suspended in 1987.

Reflecting on the political-science aspects of the Romanian case study, I find that human

rights as a general category were not a potential driving force in American foreign policy

because prior to 1985 its role was mere rhetoric and thus never came close to threatening

Romania’s MFN status. However, the Romanian case study does illustrate the power that

specific categories of human rights may possess. Though there was no general national

interest in human rights in 1985, there was in religious rights. Thus, this subject held the

power to threaten Romanian MFN status. The Romanian case study supports the

political-science hypothesis that claims that most often when national interest and human

rights concerns are on opposite sides of a debate national interest will win. China is a

current example of this, for human rightists lobby the American government against

granting it MFN status. Nevertheless, the massive market that China has to offer the

United States defined an overriding American national interest, particularly when the

U.S. is suffering from its biggest trade deficit in over ten years. Furthermore, religious

oppression is the major human-rights’ concern about China, as it had been about

Romania in the second half of the 1980s. Thus, the question remains whether at some

point such repression will threaten China’s MFN treaty-based relations with the United

States. As witnessed in the China case, religious oppression was a major subject in this

debate, but up to the present America’s national interest in the Chinese market supersedes

religious rights, as it probably will continue to do, at least until such a time when China’s

market will play a less significant role in U.S. national interest.

Although the Romanian case study situated Romania in the context of the Cold War,

marked by a bipolar international order, it demonstrated the power of a political element

– in Romania’s case the important of its perceived independence from the Soviet Union

until the coming of Gorbachev. That independence took precedence in U.S. national

interests and consequently encouraged their bilateral relations despite Romania’s human-

rights’ record. Currently, China’s market can be viewed as such a political element and

the major driving force in America’s bilateral relations with China. But when Romania's

maverick role ceased to be an American national issue, then other factors, in this case

Romania's religious oppression became important and a leading cause for Congress to

suspend Romania's MFN status.

The Role of Human Rights in American Foreign Policy: The Romanian Case 1965-1989: Bibliography

Primary Sources

Because I used many individual sources from within different collections: Congressional

Record, Foreign Broadcast Information Services, the Ford and Reagan Presidential

Libraries, Radio Free Europe, and the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents I

only included the collections in the bibliography and cited the individual items in

footnotes.

• Chiu, Daniel. Logos. “Separarea Crestina.” (“Christian Division”). Chicago:

December, 2000.

• Congressional Record. v.118 to 133, 1972 -1987.

• Foreign Broadcast Information Services. 1975-1989.

• Foreign Relations of the United States. “Eastern Europe.” v. XVII, 1964-1968.

• Foreign Relations of the United States. “International Development and Economic

Defense Policy; Commodities.” v. IX, 1964-1968.

• Foreign Relations of the United States. “Arms Control & Disarmament.” v. XI,

1964-1968.

• Ford Presidential Library. Arthur F. Burns Papers. (Nixon White House; Federal

Reserve Board).

• Ford Presidential Library. Edward J. Savage Files. (WH Press Secretary’s Office).

• Ford Presidential Library. Robert T. Hartmann Files. (WH Counselor).

• Ford Presidential Library. Vernon C. Loen and Charles Leppert Files. (WH

Congressional Relations Office).

• Ford Presidential Library. Robert K. Wolthuis Files. (WH Congressional

Relations Office).

• Ford Presidential Library. Charles H. McCall Files. (WH Editorial Staff).

• Ford Presidential Library. White House Central Files Subject File. CO 125:

“Romania.”

• Funderburk, David B. Pinstripes and Reds. Washington, DC: Selous Foundation

Press, 1987.

• Pacepa, Mihai. Red Horizon. Washington, DC: Regency Gateway, 1987.

• Radio Free Europe. Romanian Situation Report. 1970-1989.

• Reagan Presidential Library. NSC: System #8500595.

• Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. v. 6, 1970.

• Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. v. 10 to 24, 1974 –1988.

Secondary Works

• Beres, Louis Rene. Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order.

Lexington: Health and Company, 1984.

• Bouandel, Youcef. Human Rights and Comparative Politics. Aldershot: Darmouth

Publishing Company Limited, 1997.

• Drinan, Robert F. Cry of the Oppressed: The History and Hope of the Human

Rights Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987.

• Encyclopedia Britannica Online. (different key words noted in the foot notes)

• Floyd, David. Romania: Russia’s Dissident Ally. New York: Praeger, 1965.

• Garfinkle, Adam. The Devil and Uncle Sam: A User’s Guide to the Friendly

Tyrants Dilemma. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992.

• Harrington, Joseph F, and Bruce J. Courtney. Tweaking the Nose of the Russians:

Fifty Years of American-Romanian Relations, 1940-1990. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1991.

• Jowitt, Kenneth. Revolutionary Breakthrough and National Revolution. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1971.

• Kemp, Walter. Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet

Union. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press LTD, 1999.

• Kirk, Roger, and Mircea Raceanu. Romania versus the United States. New York:

St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

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and West on the Cold War. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993.

• Ratiu, Ion. Contemporary Romania. Richmond, England: Foreign Affairs Pub.

Co., 1975.

• Shafir, Michael, Romania, Politics, Economics, and Society. London: F. Pinter,

1985.

• Vunich, Wayne S. Contemporary Yugoslavia: Twenty Years of Socialist

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• Weigel, George. Idealism without Illusions. Washington, DC: Ethics and Public

Center, 1994.

25. Ibid., 178.

26. Floyd, David. Romania: Russia’s Dissident Ally. (New York: Praeger, 1965), viii.

27. Shafir, 180.

28. Partos, Gabriel. The World that Came in From the Cold: Perspectives from East

and West on the Cold War. (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs,

1993), 2.

29. Vunich, Wayne S. Contemporary Yugoslavia: Twenty Years of Socialist

Experiment. (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 19.

30. Ibid. 16.

31. Encyclopedia Britanica Online, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 2.

32. Vunich, 199.

33. Foreign relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Eastern Europe, Romania.

“Telegram From the Embassy in Romania to the Department of State.” March 18,

1965, v. XVII, 405.

34. Ibid., “Paper Prepared in the Department of State.” August 20, 1968, 265.

35. Ibid., 266.

36. Ibid., 275.

37. Ibid., “Memorandum of Conversation.” August 30, 1968, 451.

38. Ibid., “Special Memorandum Prepared in the CIA.” February 18, 1965, 31.

39. Ibid., “Aftermath of Czechoslovakia.” August, 1968, 111.

40. Ibid., “Telegram from the Embassy in Romania to the Department of State.”

March 18, 1965, 405.

41. Ratiu, 54.

42. Foreign Relations of the United States, Eastern Europe, Romania. “Telegram

from US Embassy to Department of State.” December 9, 1968, 466.

43. Ibid. 464.

44. Shafir, 180.

45. Ratiu, 55.

46. Ratiu, 58.

47. Ratiu, 57.

48. Foreign Relations of the United States, Eastern Europe, Romania. “ Special

Memorandum Prepared in the CIA.” February 18, 1965, 34-5.

49. Ibid, 431.

50. Ibid. 416.

51. Ibid. 417.

52. Weekly Compilations of Presidential Documents. v. 6 pt. 2, October 26,1970,

1462.

53. Foreign Relations of the United States, Eastern Europe, Romania, January 23,

420.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid., 450.

56. Ibid., 85.

57. Ibid., 56.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., 58-9.

60. Ibid., 417.

61. Ibid., 413-4.

62. The Law Library of the Library of Congress for the Subcommittee to Investigate

the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Law to

the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate, v II: Romania, Bulgaria,

Albania. Washington: 1965, v.

63. Ibid., 3.

64. Ibid., 14.

65. Ibid.

66. Foreign Relations of the United States, Eastern Europe, Romania, 413.

67. Ibid., 408-410.

68. Ibid., 419.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., 427 & 51.

71. Ibid., 2.

72. Ibid., 20.

73. See pages 6 & 7.

74. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. “Romania, history of.” pg. 2.

75. Congressional Record. v. 121, January 28, 1975, 25213.

76. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Papers. “State of the Union.” v. 10, January

30, 1974, 146.

77. Congressional Record. v. 13, June 21, 1974, 754.

78. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Papers. “Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile

Systems.” v. 10, July 13, 1974, 750.

79. Ibid., “Address to the People of the Soviet Union.” v. 10, July 2, 1974, 744.

80. Ibid., “Report to the Nation: After Nixon’s Return from Moscow at Loring Air

Force, Maine.” v. 10, July 3, 1974, 768.

81. Ibid., “The President’s Trip to Belgium and the Soviet Union.” v. 10, July

25,1974, 718.

82. Ibid., June 28, 1974, 736-751.

83. Non-market countries included socialist economies that were closed to or

disfavored by the Western open markets.

84. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Papers. “U.S. Foreign Policy.” v. 11, April

10, 1975, 359.

85. Ibid., 367.

86. Ibid., “The President’s Trip to Europe.” July 26, 1975, 787.

87. Congressional Record. “Romania Wants Freedom.” v. 120, pt 24, September 18,

1974, 31706. Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Hertza had been parts of

Romania but annexed by the Soviets in August 1939 on the basis of the Nazi-

Soviet Pact.

88. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Papers. “Presidential Campaign Debate.” v.

12, October 6, 1976, 1449.

89. Congressional Record. “The Bessarabian Question.” V. 121, December 9, 1975,

39556.

90. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Papers. “Presidential Campaign Debate.” v.

12, October 6, 1976, 1449.

91. Ibid., “The President’s Trip to Europe.” v. 11, July 26, 1975, 787.

92. Ibid., “Helsinki: Meeting with General Secretary Brezhnev.” July 30, 1975, 808.

93. Congressional Record. ‘Washington Post, July 27, 1975, “Romania Leaves

Soviets ‘Grinding Teeth’” by Dan Cook.” July 28, 1975, 25210.

94. Ibid.

95. Ford Presidential Library. White House Central Files, Romania. “Memo to Mr.

Brutus Coste from John Marsh Re: US-Romanian relations.” Box 43.

96. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Papers. “Helsinki: Conference on Security

and Cooperation in Europe, Press Remarks to the Conference in Finlandia Hall.”

v. 11, August 1, 1975, 810.

97. Congressional Record. “Discrimination against Hungarians in Romania.” v. 122,

February 2, 1976, 1795.

98. Ibid., “Romania Spied on North Sea Oil.” v, 121, September 19,1975, 28517.

99. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. “Signing a Joint Statement of

Principles.” V. 9, December 5, 1973, 1395.

100. Ibid.

101. Ford Presidential Library. White House Central Files, Romania. “Message

from President Ford to President Ceausescu.” August 9, 1974.

102. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. “Sinaia: Signing

Ceremony.” v. 11, August 3, 1975, 822.

103. Congressional Record. “Romanian President Visits U.S.” v. 121, June 11,

1975, 18484.

104. Ibid.

105. Ford Presidential Library. Charles H. McCall Files (WH Editorial Staff).

“‘Ford, Ceausescu Confer’, Memo by Carroll Kirpatrick.” June 2, 1975.

106. Congressional Record. “Romanian National Holiday.” v. 120, May 13,

1974, 14665.

107. Ibid., “Romanian National Holiday.” v. 120, May 13, 1974, 14693 &

14495.

108. Ibid., “The Royal Crusaders ‘Ambassadors for Friendship.’” v. 120,

February 17, 1974, 4457.

109. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. “Digest of Other WH

Announcements” v. 11, March 24, 1975, 315.

110. Congressional Record. “Consular Convention between the United States

and the Socialist Republic of Romania.” v. 118, September 19, 1972, 31283.

111. Ibid., “Encouraging Signs for improved East-West educational and

cultural relations.” v. 121, March 10, 1976, 6014.

112. Ford Presidential Library. Charles H. McCall Files (WH Editorial Staff).

“U.S. and Romania Sign Two Accords.” December 15, 1974.

113. Ford Presidential Library. Arthur F. Burns Papers (Nixon White House;

Federal Reserve Board). “Participants in Meeting with Romanian Delegation on

March 22, 1972.” (memo) March, 17, 1972.

114. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. “U.S.-Romanian

Convention with Respect to Taxes on Income: the President’s Message to the

Senate Transmitting the Convention for Advice and Consent to Ratification.” v.

10, March 28, 1974, 371.

115. Congressional Record. v. 121, January 28, 1975, 25208.

116. Ibid., “East-West Trade: U.S. Business Opportunities in Romania” v. 120,

October 9, 1974, 34566.

117. Ford Presidential Library. White House Central Files, Romania. “Letter

From Secretary of Transportation, Claude S. Brinegar, to the President.”

September 12, 1974.

118. Congressional Record. v. 121, January 28, 1975, 25207.